Microsoft releases new Windows 10 preview with Game Mode, reading aloud for e-books

Microsoft today started rolling out a new Windows 10 preview build for people participating in the fast ring of the Windows Insider Program.

Build 15019, which follows build 15014, does have significant bugs that might impact the playing of some games — but then again, it does come with the previously announced Game Mode, and Microsoft wants feedback from users, Dona Sarkar, a software engineer in Microsoft’s Windows and Devices Group, wrote in a blog post.

The Settings app now features a new section called Gaming. “Starting today, you’ll find settings for Game bar, GameDVR, Game Mode, and broadcasting and streaming in this new Gaming area. Not all elements of this section will be visible in today’s Windows Insider build, but we’ll continue to develop and deploy Gaming settings over time,” Sarkar wrote. You can enable game mode to improve performance from this settings page, and while playing games you can also hit Win + G and hitting the Settings button to toggle it on and off for individual games. (Note that Game Mode’s toggle is having a problem: “Game Mode is enabled system wide by default, however, the ON/OFF toggle in Settings will incorrectly show it as being OFF until the user manually toggles the Setting to ON which will cause it to update and accurately display the status of Game Mode system wide,” Sarkar wrote.)

A new Beam game streaming is part of this build. All you have to do is hit Win + G to start streaming.

There are 17 more games that work with the Game Bar (Win + G) in full-screen mode: Battlefield 3, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 – Zombies, The Elder Scrolls Online, FIFA 14, FIFA 17, FIFA Manager 14, Grim Dawn, Guild Wars 2, Left 4 Dead 2, MapleStory, Paragon, Payday 2, Rocket League, The Sims 4, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, and Warface.

Microsoft now makes it possible for people to have the Edge browser read e-books out loud, with a new button at the top right corner when you’re looking at an e-book. And now you can zoom by holding control and moving up and down the scroll wheel. Edge will also show emojis in full color now, not just in black and white.

The Lower Blue Light option in Settings is now called “Night Light.” (Earlier this week Apple started rolling out a macOS Sierra beta with its Night Shift feature, which came to iOS first.) Plus, Microsoft improved “the range of color temperatures” for the feature, Sarkar wrote.

The progress of downloads of apps and games from the Windows Store will now show up in Action Center.

The Troubleshooting section has been moved from Control Panel to Settings.

While setting up a new Windows 10 device, you’ll see the new privacy settings that were unveiled a few weeks ago, along with a way to sign up for Windows Hello authentication while using Cortana voiceover and voice input. Voiceovers are from human actors instead of machines, too. Plus, the pages for signing up and signing in are “paginated and simplified [and] will help in reducing the overall cognitive load and in improving accessibility,” Sarkar wrote. (But when you’re in the Wi-Fi part of the out-of-box experience, saying yes or no won’t work properly.)

There’s a long list of bug fixes in this build.

Certain apps won’t randomly crash when you switch to tablet mode anymore.

While using Narrator, Edge won’t be silent or say “no item in view” anymore while you’re navigating with the browser. Twitch streams should work fine in Edge now. Edge won’t crash when you share a PDF anymore. Certain Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps will now dismiss the virtual keyboard as they should when you tap outside a text box that’s in focus in tablet mode.

Certain kinds of secondary tiles won’t show up anymore in the Recently Added list in the start menu. Beyond that, Microsoft has now made it possible to “drag the final tile out of a folder onto the same row as the folder tile,” Sarkar wrote.

Invoking Cortana by voice won’t use an extreme amount of CPU anymore; that was happening with build 15014. And Cortana won’t crash if you type out a Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path that’s already been used before.

Notepad in full-screen mode will now properly recognize attempts to scroll at the far right edge of the scroll bar.

Settings is now more reliable. The part of Settings for choosing default apps won’t crash anymore when you try to choose one from the Windows Store. And the settings for mouse and keyboard won’t be inexplicably unresponsive for a few seconds at a time.

The Win + Shift + S keyboard shortcut will now work again in Snipping Tool while using any option other than the rectangle.

And Dota 2 should work fine once again. Netflix won’t crash at launch anymore, either.

But of course there are known issues here — and not just for games (some popular ones might crash or get black screens, and sometimes games will get minimized and can’t be restored when you click on certain things).

Edge Extensions won’t work. Sooooorrrrry!

When you’re downloading this build, it might once again look like there is no progress, but trust! There is!

Some Google websites may not work properly in Edge in this build, and Sarkar recommends trying to visit them in an InPrivate tab.

There is a Mixed Reality area of Settings that shouldn’t be there, Microsoft says.

Tencent apps still aren’t working as they should, dragging an app from the apps list to make a tile won’t work, and Settings might still say your updates are managed by an organization even if your PC isn’t. (See Sarkar’s full blog post for more known issues and bug fixes.)

If you want to try this new build for PC or mobile, but you’re not a Windows Insider, you can sign up here.