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Microsoft releases Windows 10 build 20231 to the Dev channel

It's Wednesday, and right on schedule, there's a new Windows 10 Insider Preview available. This one is build 20231, and there's nothing wild about it. As usual, it comes from the rs_prerelease branch, meaning that it's not tied to any particular feature update. The Dev channel is in a perpetual state of vNext.

One thing that's new is that Microsoft is adding yet another page to the Windows 10 OOBE to help customize your experience. It's going to ask you how you plan to use your PC, such as for gaming, creativity, and so on.

Improving relevancy of initial device setup

Based on feedback, we’re exploring adding a page to Windows setup (OOBE) to help better understand how you plan to use your device and aid in customizing your device given your intended usage.

This is the initial wave of work for this feature, and Insiders may notice different options presented in OOBE depending on what they select, however at this time Insiders will not notice any other configuration differences after exiting OOBE. We look forward to sharing future improvements in this space.

This feature is rolling out to a subset of Insiders in the Dev Channel at first, to help us quickly identify issues that may impact performance and reliability. Rest assured they will be gradually rolled out to everyone in the Dev Channel. NOTE: You will see this feature if you choose to reset your PC and when you do a clean install of Windows. You can find the ISO for Build 20231 here on our download page later today.

Better Management Options for App Default File Associations

Enterprise customers can now modify file associations on a per-user or per-device basis. This change will apply to existing users as well as users with new deployments. This means that IT admins can set which apps will automatically open various file types or links. For example, this makes it easy to set Microsoft Edge as your organization’s default browser, or always open PDFs in your organization’s preferred app. Leveraging this group policy for the default browser and common file types means that your organization’s end users will not have to decide on these defaults themselves.

Deployment/Testing Steps:

  1. Generate Default Application Associations XML file by following this page.
  2. Manually modify the XML by adding 2 new properties:
  3. Add Version=”1″ to the DefaultAssociations tag.
  4. Add Suggested=”True” to any Association tag.
  5. Enable the group policy to set the default file associations by following this doc.
  6. Reboot or log in as the user.

Please note: If your device does not have this feature enabled, the policy will fall back to the default logic and will not respect the “Version” and “Suggested” fields of the policy.

This feature is rolling out to a subset of Insiders in the Dev Channel at first, to help us quickly identify issues that may impact performance and reliability. Rest assured they will be gradually rolled out to everyone in the Dev Channel.

As usual, you can grab today's build via Windows Update. If you're not on the Fast ring yet, you can enroll through the Windows Insider Program tab in Settings.

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