What’s New in the First Windows 10 Feature Update Under Panos Panay’s Leadership: DirectX 12 Ultimate, Accessibility, Edge, & Cortana Improvements
by Rafia ShaikhMicrosoft has released Windows 10 May 2020 Update to its 1 billion customers around the world. The company is taking a phased approach to this rollout to ensure a "reliable and productive experience," limiting availability to those devices that are running Windows 10, versions 1903 and 1909. Windows 10 2004 is now available through the Windows Update and ISO files for clean installation.
As for what exactly is coming with version 2004, Microsoft says the May 2020 Update "comes with feature improvements that will help save you time and maybe even be a source of fun."
Windows 10 May 2020 Update Is Officially Out – How to Skip the Line & Manually Install v2004
From improved connectivity to app updates, here is a snapshot of all that is new in Windows 10 2004:
Faster and easier connections. We’re making it easier and faster to pair your Bluetooth devices to your compatible Windows 10 PC. Now you can take care of everything in notifications (instead of Settings) with fewer steps.
Go passwordless. Did you know - for improved security and a simple sign-in experience, you can sign in with your face, fingerprint, or PIN? It’s easier than ever to enable passwordless sign-in for your Microsoft accounts: just go to Settings > Accounts > Sign-in options on your Windows 10 PC and select ‘On’ under ‘Make your device passwordless’. Note that this is hardware dependent.
More ლ(╹◡╹ლ). We’re bringing the fun by making more kaomoji available directly in the Windows emoji keyboard. To access you can use the shortcut, Windows key + Period key to access (⌐■_■).
Name your desktops. Now instead of “Desktop 1” or “Desktop 2” you can give your Virtual Desktops more descriptive, clever, or amusing names. Using Virtual Desktop in Windows 10 allows you to expand your desktop beyond the physical limitations of the space, organize groups of related tasks, and easily switch between them. Tackling what you want to—when you want to—just got a whole lot easier. Visit this post to learn more on how to access Virtual Desktop in Windows 10.
See gaming in a whole new light. New DirectX 12 Ultimate features provide smoother graphics with increased detail - all without sacrificing framerate.
Customization and utility at your fingertips. Xbox Game Bar now supports third-party widgets, helping you customize the overlay experience to fit with the way you game.
Improvements to some go-to apps help make that job, assignment, side hustle, homework, workday, work week—all of it—just that much better Memory improvements in Microsoft Edge. The browser is the most used application and where people spend a large portion of their time on Windows. Segment heap has been the default heap for UWP apps for a while now. Windows is excited to announce that one of the first Win32 applications that will take advantage of segment heap capabilities is Microsoft Edge. The early internal testing results of devices on the May 2020 Update are showing a memory usage reduction of up to 27% when browsing with Microsoft Edge. Individual device performance will vary based upon configuration and usage, but the lower memory usage could provide a better device experience because more memory would be available for apps to use. Microsoft will be opening this capability to more developers very soon with supporting materials. Developers that take advantage of the expanded availability of segment heap memory improvements can also optimize their Win32 app memory utilization on Windows. Please this page for the latest developer information.
Stay on top of your numbers. Keep the calculator close by—now you can choose to keep the Calculator app on top of everything.
Notepad newness. The beloved 30-year-old text editor has some small but mighty improvements. There’s now wrap around find/replace, quick text zooming, and when you see an asterisk in the title bar you’ll know you have unsaved changes.
Bringing your smartphone and Windows PC closer together. The May 2020 Update brings the popular Your Phone app’s Calls feature to ARM supported PCs from Microsoft and our OEM partners. You will now be able to place, receive, or text reply to your incoming phone calls directly on your PC without having your Android phone right next to your PC. That’s not all, with the Your Phone app, you can stay in your flow by sending or receiving texts, checking notifications and getting instant access to your Android phone’s photos and apps via your computer’s large screen and keyboard. To learn more about the Your Phone app visit this page.
The new Cortana chat-based experience is here. Your personal productivity assistant now has an updated chat-based user interface where you can type or speak requests in natural language to save time finding what you need and stay on track. For the best experience, sign in with your work or school account and connect with people, check your schedule, add tasks, set reminders and more**. Visit our Microsoft 365 Blog for more information and select the Cortana icon to try out the experience for yourself with requests such as:
“Am I free at [time]?” “Who is [person]?” “Find time with [person] to talk about [topic]” “Join my meeting” “Remind me to [task] at [time]” “Change the brightness” “Is it going to rain tomorrow?” Accessibility improvements in Windows 10 2004 to help empower everyone, everywhere Narrator news. Narrator sounds have been revamped and are now more functional and responsive. There’s also a new command to summarize a webpage, and you’ll also hear some table reading improvements. Plus, Narrator will automatically start reading webpages and emails (when they’re opened in Outlook and the Mail app).
Find that cursor faster. Windows Magnifier has a new ability to keep the text cursor in the center of the screen, making it easier and smoother to type.
More Eye Control. Drag and drop is now here! We’ve also made improvements to the pause experience and provided some new opportunities in Settings. Note that a third-party accessory is required to access this experience.
Language learnings. The Global Language Experience team continues to revamp Language Settings, bringing you quick and easy ways to check your settings at a glance. You’ll also find improved typing experiences in Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
* DirectX 12 Ultimate available with supported games and graphics chips, and requires the latest Windows 10 update.
Loving this new Windows 10 2004 feature update for far? Go to Settings > Update & Security to see if it's available for your machine. Alternatively, you can download the ISO files and clean install this newest version of the operating system on your device.