Articles about Windows 10

Yesterday, Microsoft rolled out a new Windows 10 build to those insiders on the Beta Channel, and today it follows that up with a new release for those in the Dev Channel.

Build 20190 comes with a new post-update experience which can be accessed through the Tips app. This useful addition tells you what has changed each time you install a major update.

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With the arrival of any update for Windows 10 there are questions. What problems does it fix? What new problems does it introduce? What new features does it add? What does it break? What features does it remove?

With the release of the KB4568831 update a couple of weeks ago, Microsoft took Windows 10 version 2004 (Windows 10 May 2020 Update) up to build 19041.423. As well as fixing connectivity and printing problems, this update also killed off a handy option related to updating drivers -- the ability to search online for new drivers from the Device Manager.

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There are numerous useful keyboard shortcuts that can make your computing life easier, but Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V for copying and pasting via the clipboard are arguably the most helpful. But you may well feel that Windows 10's built-in utility is a little lacking -- how about the ability to store multiple items on the clipboard? What about synchronizing the clipboard between devices? The ability to keep things on the clipboard permanently?

Well these are actually options that are already available in Windows 10! For some reason Microsoft has opted to not only have it disabled by default, but also failed to advertise its existence. Here's how to enable clipboard history and how to use it.

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The Windows 10 Insider Beta Channel is what used to be the Slow ring, and updates pushed out here are typically a lot more stable than those on the Dev Channel (previously the Fast ring).

Today, Microsoft rolls out Build 19042.450 to the Beta Channel, and the new flight is mostly about resolving a number of security vulnerabilities.

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Windows 10 Home offers you a number of personalization, customization and tweaking options, but Windows 10 Professional takes things even further. Thanks to the inclusion of Group Policy Editor, not only can you tweak the hell out of the operating system, but also lock it down for ultimate security.

Group Policy Editor is unique to the Professional edition of Windows 10, and it gives you access to hundreds of settings that are either simply not available in the Home edition, or have to be implemented through awkward registry edits.

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Windows has featured a clipboard for time immemorial, but it has always been rather limited -- so much so that you may have been drawn to a third-party clipboard utility. In future versions of Windows, this will change as Microsoft is giving the tool a serious update.

The new clipboard can be found in Windows 10 build 20185 which was released to the Dev Channel last week. It will be a while before the feature makes its way to the average user, but it's still an exciting glimpse into the future.

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An unpatched vulnerability in the Windows Print Spooler exists that could be exploited by an attacker to run malicious software with elevated system privileges.

The issue affects Windows 7, Windows 8.x, Windows 10 as well as versions of Windows Server. It is being tracked as CVE-2020-1048 and CVE-2020-1337 and has a severity rating of "Important". Despite having been acknowledged by Microsoft back in May, a working patch is yet to be rolled out.

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Three-hundred-and-ninety-eight in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 on the Microsoft Store in the past seven days.

If you are on Windows 10 version 2004 right now, you may get some of the features of the next feature update right now. Check out Wayne's guide on how to do that.

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Windows 10 currently lets you choose from two styles -- Dark Mode and Light Mode -- which you can enable and switch between in the Settings > Personalization section of the OS.

If you’ve ever wished for access to more style modes than that, then you’ll be interested in a new app which lets you customize Windows with additional styles, and can even give Windows 10 a convincing retro makeover.

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Microsoft has been introducing a few new and interesting features to its preview builds lately, including a new Start menu and improved alt-tab experience, which you can now also get on your non-Insider version of Windows 10, if you follow our instructions.

Today the software giant rolls out to Windows 10 Build 20185 to the Dev Channel (what used to be the Fast ring).

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What's that you say? There's a Windows 10 update that's causing problems? Get outta here! Just over a month ago, we wrote about KB4559309 -- the automatic update that gives everyone the Chromium-based version of Microsoft Edge -- and complaints that it was causing systems to slow down.

Well it seems that it wasn't just a few isolated cases. Microsoft has now been hit with enough people complaining about performance issues and slow booting, that the company has been forced to launch an investigation. It is also asking for more feedback from anyone experiencing the slow-down problem or a general reduction in system performance.

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The telemetry features that are built into Windows 10 have people falling into one of a few camps. There are those who don't even know what telemetry is, those who know but don’t care that Microsoft is gathering data from their computer, and those who know what it is and consider it to be a massive invasion of privacy.

For anyone who counts themselves in this last group, there are numerous settings, tools and techniques that can be used to block telemetry in Windows 10. One of the more ingenious is making use of the HOSTS file (used to resolve hostnames), but now Microsoft has updated its Defender tool so this is detected as a "severe" risk, specifically "SettingsModifier:Win32/HostsFileHijack".

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Being a Windows Insider obviously carries some risks. You may install a build which doesn’t play at all nicely on your PC, resulting in features breaking, or worse. The plus side is you do get to try out cool new features before anyone else.

Recently Microsoft introduced an updated Start menu with theme-aware tiles, and an improved Alt-Tab experience which shows all open tabs from Microsoft Edge. Although you officially need to be an Insider to enjoy these, there is a sneaky workaround that will allow you to get them without having to join the program.

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Microsoft is continuing its ongoing game of cat and mouse with itself, releasing updates to fix problems introduced by previous updates. The latest to be released is KB4568831 and it addresses a range of issues.

Among the fixes this particular update brings are issues with LTE connectivity in Windows 10 version 2004, problems with Bluetooth headsets, and issues with printing.

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As recently promised, Microsoft has released PowerToys v0.20.0. This release sees the arrival of a new utility in the form of Color Picker for grabbing hex and RGB color values from anywhere on screen. There are other changes and fixes too.

There are now eight utilities available in PowerToys, and with this release Microsoft has made numerous improvements to those that were already in the collection. This includes adding SVG icon rendering to File Explorer, as well as improvements to Keyboard Manager.

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