It's Wednesday, and that means that it's time for a new Windows 10 Insider Preview build. This time it's build 21292, and there isn't much that's new. The improvements focus on the news and interests feature that showed up in last week's build 21286. Other than that, there's really nothing that's new this week.
The feature adds a news feed to your taskbar, and mostly, it's getting fixes this week. Microsoft also talked a bit about how weather works. Here's the full changelog:
Improvements to news and interests on the taskbar
Thanks for all the feedback on news and interests, which we announced in last week’s blog post. The team has been reading it all! We’re continuing to improve the experience and this week are happy to announce a handful of fixes:
- We fixed multiple issues impacting performance and reliability.
- We fixed an issue where an empty flyout would be shown after opening news and interests.
- We fixed an issue where the text on the taskbar button wasn’t being read by screen readers and some tooltips were missing.
- We fixed an issue where news and interests in the taskbar was not displaying correctly when using small taskbar icons.
- We fixed an issue where the news and interests button would temporarily show no content.
- We fixed an issue where the news and interests flyout would not dismiss by tapping outside the window or again on the taskbar button.
- We fixed an issue where the content of the taskbar button would look blurry.
- We fixed an issue where news and interests would not show fresh content after toggling the background apps setting.
- We fixed an issue where the flyout would not dismiss when you hover off the right edge.
- We fixed an issue where it was not possible to navigate into the flyout using keyboard.
- We fixed an issue where the news and interests taskbar setting would be reset to show icon and text after updating to a new windows version.
With news and interests on the Windows taskbar, not only do you get quick access to the latest headlines and weather, but you also get real-time traffic conditions and alerts that update throughout the day. If you click on the Traffic card, you’ll see details on the traffic alerts, traffic cameras, and traffic times between nearby cities with a bigger map experience.
We also wanted to take a moment and talk a little more in detail about the weather experience that news and interests on the Windows taskbar provides. Current weather conditions are shown to you directly on the taskbar, so that you can stay up to date on weather conditions at a glance. The weather information displayed on the taskbar updates throughout the day, so that you see an accurate visual representation of current weather conditions in your location, along with the temperature. You can change the location of the weather you see by clicking on the three dots on the Weather card and then clicking Edit location. It’s easy to click through for the forecast, too—just click on the Weather card to see an immersive weather experience with accurate, state-of-the-art forecasts, on interactive, animated maps that make the weather easy to understand, along with timely news for severe weather events.
- When you click the Weather card, you’ll see a full-page view of the weather, with details such as the current ‘feels like’ temperature, wind, and humidity level, along with hourly predictions for the day’s temperature and chances of precipitation, so you can plan your day. For those who really like to plan ahead, we also show a quick view of the 10-day forecast to help if, for example, you have some outdoors errands to run in the coming week.
- Our forecasts are powered by radar images that are augmented by social, spatial, and temporal data processed by deep learning in our neural weather model. These forecasts reflect small topographical variances in your specific area so you can get forecasts for your street, not your county, with predictions on a minute-to-minute basis.
- If you want to dive deeper beyond the weather summary, scroll down to see a rich, interactive map of predicted weather conditions over time in your area, powered by Bing Maps and MSN Weather predictions. You can change views and zoom in to your specific location to see animations over time of the predicted temperature, precipitation, wind, and more. For users in the U.S., the map also provides detailed views of severe weather events such as winter storms, wildfires, and hurricanes.
As a reminder, news and interests is currently available to a subset of Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel right now. Managing the rollout of features like this allows us to quickly identify issues that may impact performance and reliability. We plan to evolve this experience over time, so please let us know what you think and how we can make it better through Feedback Hub (go to Desktop Environment > News and interests). The team is excited to hear what you think!
IMPORTANT NOTE: This feature is currently only available to Windows Insiders in United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and India. This feature also requires the new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser (Stable) to be installed on your PC. We are also testing different variations of this experience so some Insiders may see a different experience than others.
As always, you can download the build through Windows Update. If you're not on the Dev channel yet, you can go to the Windows Insider Program tab to get started.
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