Windows 10 Insider preview build 14986 fixes Taskbar settings among others

Along with a hefty helping of new Cortana additions and enterprise cloud printing, Windows 10 Insider preview also brought with it a sizeable amount of fixes and improvements.

Here are the highlighted items the Windows team sought to improve in this build.

Other changes, improvements, and fixes for PC

We have improved the Windows Hello face which may require you to “Improve Recognition” to get recognized again. To do this – go to Settings > Accounts > Sign-in Options and under “Windows Hello” and “Face Recognition”, select “Improve Recognition” to go through the Improve Recognition wizard.

We updated the Taskbar’s context menu settings entry to now explicitly be called “Taskbar settings”, as that is where it pointed.

We fixed an issue where the Virtual Touchpad’s left and right buttons might not work on some devices. We also fixed an issue where the Virtual Touchpad wouldn’t launch if the primary monitor was non-touch, and added the Virtual Touchpad icon to the Taskbar settings where you can Turn system icons on or off.

We fixed the issue where apps such as Store, Photos, and People might launch on their own after your PC had been inactive for a period of time.

We fixed the issue where navigating to Settings > System > Battery would crash the Settings app.

We’ve changed the default state of the Handwriting Panel to be floating next to the text field, rather than docked at the bottom of the screen. If you prefer docked-mode, you can still select it by tapping the icon in the top right corner of the Handwriting Panel.

We fixed an issue where using ~ to switch languages using the Thai keyboard when typing in Office apps, such as Outlook or Word 2016, might sometimes result in a hang.

We’ve updated our migration logic, so that going forward from 14986 the default user’s numlock setting will now be preserved across upgrades.

We fixed an issue where double-clicking on an Excel document to open it from File Explorer would crash Microsoft Excel.

We fixed an issue where Windows Hello might get stuck “Looking for you”.

We fixed an issue Insiders with Surface Dial may have experienced recently where rotating the Dial could result in unexpected beeps.

We’re moving some things around in Storage Settings – stay tuned for future updates. For this flight, you’ll notice that the settings to change save locations has moved to its own page. We also fixed an issue where Storage Usage for the Other category might show an unexpectedly high number.

We fixed an issue where the PowerShell entry in File Explorer’s File menu would sometimes be unexpectedly greyed out.

We fixed an issue where the Clock and Calendar flyout in the taskbar wouldn’t launch when the display language was set to Chinese (Traditional) and the system was using the phonetic sorting method.

We’ve updated the full screen Settings search results to now use smaller icons – we feel this delivers an overall more polished feel, as well as enables more search results to display on the page at a time.

We fixed an issue where some notifications might draw too high or too low, and then be seen moving itself to the correct position.

We fixed an issue where the outline incoming notification toasts could still be seen if notification banners as a whole for that particular app had been turned off.

We fixed an issue Insiders may have experienced where the Favorites bar on desktop might appear empty, despite having items in the Favorites folder.

We fixed an issue that could result in CPU throttling when idling on certain webpages with many gifs or looping videos in Microsoft Edge.

We fixed an issue that could result in Alt + D sometimes not being able to set focus to the address bar in Microsoft Edge.

For Insiders with PCs that upgraded to builds 14926-14959, some default power settings may have been lost and not recovered on subsequent upgrades. The effect of this causes devices to potentially use more power, change the power button behavior on tablets, etc. Starting with 14986, an attempt to detect this issue and re-apply the power settings will be made during upgrade. This attempt is a temporary process to help address this issue for Insiders, and will be removed once we’re closer to the Creators Update release.

We’ve heard your feedback, and updated our Windows Error Reporting logic so that uploading crash data should no longer interfere with online game play, video streaming, Skype calls, or other network-intensive activity. Please keep an eye out for this if you experience any crashes and let us know how it goes.

We fixed an issue resulting in Microsoft Studios games like Microsoft Sudoku, Jigsaw, Minesweeper, Taptiles, and Treasure Hunt potentially freezing at the splash screen on launch.

We fixed an issue where, if the taskbar location was set to be on top, it was visible on the Welcome screens after upgrading.

Well, that certainly is an eye full of improvements sure to appease a large dose of Fast Ring Insiders for the remainder of the week. If you’re testing out Windows 10 in a Fast Ring Insider capacity, head over to the Update Setting page to get started.

Let us know what you think.

Happy downloading, Insiders!