Yesterday, Microsoft released build 20170 of Windows 10 to Windows Insiders. The update comes with major improvements since the last release, which contained a redesigned start menu and more.
The Sound settings are slowly transitioning from the legacy Control Panel to the Settings app, with the ‘System > Sound > Manage sound devices’ section receiving some changes. This will now let you know which sound device is default. The audio mixer will now also link to Settings.
A new icon for the Settings app is also included in 20170, and it fits the dark and light theme. This was first seen in the Windows 10X preview, a version of Windows 10 built specifically for dual-screen and foldable devices.
Microsoft has also updated the taskbar search with a new ‘two-column’ view with access to recent activities and quick searches, such as ‘Weather’ or ‘Top News’. The search bar also supports searching the web for people that speak dutch.
Last week we mentioned we were planning on bringing more Control Panel capabilities forward into Settings, and here’s another one – we’re updating Settings > System > Sound > Manage sound devices to now let you know which device is default, and if not, enable you to set it as your default device or default communication device.
We’ve also updated the volume mixer to include a link to the per app audio settings, which you can use to redirect audio endpoints per app.
Improving search from the taskbar in Windows 10
We’ve recently unveiled two improvements to the search bar in Windows that make it even easier to find what you need.
Click on Search in the taskbar or press the Windows key + S to view an updated design for Search Home. A new two-column layout offers easy readability, as well as fast access to Quick Searches, where you can see local weather, top news, and more helpful info. To find other web results or navigate directly to a website, just type in the search bar like normal.
The new layout is available in markets that enable Quick Searches, including the United States, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Spain, and the UK.
In addition, the Windows search bar now supports web search for Dutch-speaking customers in the Netherlands. Users with their Windows region set to Netherlands and their language set to Dutch can now search the web from their search bar without using a browser. Previously the feature was limited to English-speaking users in the region.
We welcome your feedback on these updates. You can share your comments by clicking the feedback button on Search Home.
As part of our ongoing efforts to update the iconography across Windows, Insiders will notice we’re introducing a new Settings icon in this build. The new Settings icon looks great on the Start menu with the theme-aware tiles introduced in Build 20161!
While we work on improving reliability, we’re temporarily turning off Notepad’s ability to persist open windows across restarts and updates.
An experimental implementation of Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.3 is enabled by default starting with Insider Preview Build 20170. IIS/HTTP.SYS have TLS 1.3 enabled by default. SSPI callers can use TLS 1.3 by passing the new crypto-agile SCH_CREDENTIALS structure when calling AcquireCredentialsHanlde. SSPI callers using TLS 1.3 need to make sure their code correctly handles SEC_I_RENEGOTIATE.
