Welcome back to our Windows 10 news recap, where we go over the top stories of the past week in the world of Microsoft’s flagship operating system.

Notepad is coming to the Windows 10 Microsoft Store

Microsoft is working on unbundling Windows 10’s default text editor, Notepad, from the OS by bringing it to the Microsoft Store, allowing it to be updated independently of Windows 10.

Windows 10 Halo app is being retired today

This week saw the Halo app on Windows 10 being retired, as the developer behind the game, 343 Industries, focuses on bringing Halo: The Master Chief Collection to PC, as well as the next instalment in the franchise, Halo: Infinite. The app will no longer receive any updates.

As we look to the future and future projects, we have to say goodbye to some existing ones. Today, we are letting you know of plans to officially sunset the Halo App for Windows PC beginning August 16. Read more: https://t.co/MJAh1ynqCS pic.twitter.com/HKH4hqHQsx

— Halo (@Halo) August 15, 2019

Windows 10 Plex app leaves the Microsoft Store, New desktop version launched

The Plex app for Windows 10 has left the Microsoft Store. Instead, the company has developed a new desktop version. This marks a shift away from Microsoft’s own store offering, and a move back to standalone software.

New Windows Search Home experience is now coming to the Windows 10 October 2018 Update

Users on the Windows 10 October 2018 Update are set to receive the new Windows Search Home experience, after Microsoft began rolling it out based on “positive feedback.”

That’s it for this week. We’ll be back next week with more Windows 10 news.

For reasons seemingly undisclosed to the public, Microsoft has decided to put an end-of-life date for its Photos app video sync to OneDrive.

According to a post on its Windows Support page, January 10, 2020, will be the date that metadata from any video project synced to OneDrive via the Photos app will not only be unsupported but deleted.

What’s happening exactly?

The feature that syncs in-progress video projects to OneDrive is being removed from the Video Editor in the Windows 10 Photos app.

When this happens on January 10, 2020, the metadata for any video projects that are being synced to OneDrive will be deleted. The metadata includes things like the photo and video clip order, music timing, and text for the title cards for a given video project. None of your actual photos, video clips, or anything else you’ve saved to your personal OneDrive will be affected by this change.

With that being said, Microsoft must be hoping its six-month warning is enough time for people to come up with a backup solution; if not, they are offering a couple of options of their own for users.

• The easiest way to save all of the latest versions of all of your video projects you’ve synced to OneDrive is to select the Turn off sync for all projects link in the app message that you’ll see on the main Video Editor page.
• Another way is to open each video project one at a time. If the project is synced to OneDrive, you’ll see this message – select Turn off sync now and the latest version of that project will be saved to your device. Again, you’ll only see this message if you’re currently syncing the project to OneDrive.

For any users who may forget to manually switch, Microsoft will automatically do the switch for them after January 10, 2020, but some saved projects my lose their most recent changes during the transition.

Microsoft has yet to explain the move or give any insights into what comes next for the video editing suite in the Photos app that will either supplement or replace the removed sync situation.

Microsoft is planning to bring and make Notepad as a store-updatable app on Windows 10. This will come as a massive change, and will finally un-bundle the popular text editor from the operating system, allowing for more frequent updates.

The announcement of this change was made today as part of Windows Insider Build 18963. According to Microsoft, future Notepad updates, and starting with build 18963, will be automatically available via the store.

“This will allow us the flexibility to respond to issues and feedback outside the bounds of Windows releases.” As always, if you have any feedback for Notepad, we welcome it in the Feedback Hub under Apps > Notepad,” explained head of the Windows Insider Program, Dona Sarkar.

Previous featured updates to Windows 10 have introduced new features like expanded line ending support, as well as wrap around search, and an indicator for when there is unsaved content. With Notepad coming to the Microsoft Store on Windows 10, the possibilities of new features will likely be almost endless.

That was a bit unexpected, but Microsoft has just released a new Windows 20H1 build for Fast Ring Insiders, and it’s a pretty big one. Indeed, The preview build 18963 brings GPU temperature to Task manager for PCs with dedicated GPUs, something that PC gamers should appreciate.

Power users who juggle between multiple virtual desktops all day will also be pleased to know that it’s finally possible to rename virtual desktops in this build, and name changes will persist after a reboot. For now, this feature will only be available for 50% of Fast Ring Insiders, and Microsoft says it will roll it out to more Insiders in the futures.

There are many other new features in this build, including a Mouse Cursor speed in Settings, improvements to Windows Search, and Microsoft also made some changes to make an new account picture in Windows appear more quickly across Windows apps.

Another important change in this build is that Notepad is becoming a Microsoft Store app. After years of neglect, the has been updated with a couple of new features recent in recent months, and this change will allow Microsoft to update it separately from Windows updates.

You can check out everything that’s new in this build below:

GPU temperature comes to Task Manager

One of the longstanding requests we’ve been tracking for Task Manager is to add temperature monitoring support, and with today’s build we’re making progress on that ask. If you have a dedicated GPU card, we will now bubble up the current temperature next to its listing in the Performance Tab.

We hope you like the change! If you have any further feedback for Task Manager, please don’t hesitate to share it. To make suggestions or report issues in this space, press WIN+F and file the feedback under Desktop Environment > Task Manager in the Feedback Hub.

Notes:

• Showing the GPU temperature in Task Manager is currently only supported if you have a dedicated GPU card.
• You may need an updated graphics driver to see the temperature. Specifically one which supports version 2.4 (or higher) of WDDM is required. To check which version your PC has, press WIN+R and enter dxdiag. Under the Display tab, it will say your WDDM version next to Driver Model.
• Currently the temperature value is only supported in Celsius.

Renaming your virtual desktops

Virtual Desktops exist to help you visually and cognitively separate different tasks on your PC. They can also be handy when doing presentations – enabling you to prepare demos on different desktops. Something we’ve heard loud and clear is that you want to be able to set names for your different desktops, in order to help cement the separation between workspaces, and we’re excited to share that rolling out to Insiders in the Fast ring is exactly that!

Wanna try it out? With the change, when you open Task View (by selecting the Task View button in the taskbar, or by pressing WIN+Tab,) clicking the name of your desktop will now switch it to be an editable fiel where you can set the name to be anything you’d like (including emoji). You can also right-click the thumbnail of the desired desktop in Task View, and a context menu with a Rename entry in it should appear. If you don’t have any additional desktops created yet, select “New desktop” in Task View to get started.

And yes, since we know you’ll ask – the names persist reboot.

Currently this change is live for 50% of Insiders in the Fast ring, and we’ll be expanding the rollout over the next few weeks as we evaluate the quality of experience.

Improving the Optional Features page in Settings

Based on your feedback, we’ve made a number of usability improvements to the Optional Features page in Settings (Settings > Apps & Features > Optional Features), and they’re now starting to roll out to Insiders in the Fast ring.

• Multi-select: You can now select and install multiple optional features at the same time.
• Better list management: You can now search through lists of optional features and sort them by Name, Size, and Install date.
• More useful information: You can now see the install date for each optional feature in your ‘Installed features’ list. We’ve also added feature dependencies to the description of each optional feature in the list of features available for install.
• Easier page navigation: View the status of your latest installs/uninstalls/cancels right on the main page in the ‘Latest actions’ section. You can now add optional features and view your history via pop-up dialogues, so you never have to navigate away from the main page

We’re excited for you to try it! Currently these changes are live for 50% of Insiders in the Fast ring, and we’ll be expanding the rollout over the next few weeks as we evaluate the quality of experience. Here’s a peek at what you’ll see once it’s available on your PC:

Adding Mouse Cursor speed to Settings

As some Insiders have noticed, you can now set your mouse cursor speed from within Settings! This is the latest piece of our larger ongoing effort to converge Settings and Control Panel experiences. You can find the setting under Settings > Devices > Mouse.

Making Notepad store-updatable

Notepad has been a well-loved text editor in Windows for over 30 years. Over the last few releases, we’ve been making a number of small improvements to Notepad based on your feedback (including expanded line ending support, wrap around search, and indicating when there’s unsaved content.) Starting with this build, we’re making a change so that future Notepad updates will be automatically available via the store. This will allow us the flexibility to respond to issues and feedback outside the bounds of Windows releases. As always, if you have any feedback for Notepad, we welcome it in the Feedback Hub under Apps > Notepad.

Traditional Chinese IME improvements

Thank you everyone who’s shared feedback about the new Traditional Chinese Bopomofo, ChangJie, and Quick IMEs. The developer team has been working on improving the quality and fixing bugs. With today’s build:

• Toolbar Improvements: We fixed an issue where toolbar shows up even when [Use IME toolbar] is turned off in the setting. We also added [Hide toolbar] button in the toolbar menu.

Note: Other ways to show/hide toolbar:

• From settings: Right click [中/英] icon > Click [Settings] > [General] > [Use IME toolbar]
• From right click menu: Right click [中/英] icon > [Show/hide IME toolbar]

 

• Candidate Window Improvements: We have been working on improving candidate window quality.
  • We fixed an issue where candidate window sometimes only showed limited number of candidates.
  • We fixed an issue where candidates shown in table view cannot be selected by number keys.

Please keep trying out this new IME, and let us know your feedback.

Changes to your account picture in Windows

Changing the picture for the account you use to sign in to Windows is now better than ever! Your updated picture will now show up quickly across Windows, apps, and many of the Microsoft sites you use every day. Previously, you might see as many as three or four different pictures for your account in different apps and sites at one time. Its super easy to try out – just go to Your info in Windows settings and change your picture there!

Steps

1. Open “Your info” in Windows settings by pressing the Windows key, and typing “Your info,” and selecting “Your account info.”
2. Use the options in ‘Create your picture’ to select a new picture for your account.
3. Check if your picture has been updated in Windows, and on the sites and apps you use.

Note: We’re still working with many sites and apps that will need to be updated to work well with this new feature. For example, the account manager control that appears in the upper right of many Microsoft websites currently updates every 24 hours. This will be changed in the next few months to update quickly when your account picture changes.

Other updates for Insiders

Windows Search improvements 

We wanted to take a moment to cover some of the server-side search improvements we’ve been rolling out based on your feedback:

Improved spell correction for Apps & Settings searches

Windows Search has built-in spell correction to help you find what you’re looking for. When you’re typing quickly sometimes mistakes happen – we’re excited to announce that we’ve updated our spell correction technology to intelligently understand and correct small typos like “powerpiont” and “exce;,” which previously would return no results. With these updates, you get better results faster. This feature is now available on both Insider and retail builds in English-language markets.  

Hints to improve Best match results

Our goal with Windows Search is to provide a simple, to-use experience, and a key aspect of this is making results easy to understand. Something we’ve heard from you is surprise that sometimes settings search results don’t match your search. To help address this, in certain cases where the Best match result isn’t an exact match for your search, a “Related:” line will be included below the result to help clarify why this result is appearing.  We’ll be expanding this feature to include Apps search in the coming weeks.  This feature is now available on both Insider and retail builds in English (United States).

Bringing the latest Search Home experience to more users

With the Windows 10 May 2019 Update we updated Search Home to help you save time by adding quick access to your Top apps and Recent activities. After receiving positive feedback and comments about this new experience, we’re now making it available to more users by rolling it out to everyone using the Windows 10 October 2018 Update as well. We hope you find them useful and that they help make Search Home more productive for you.

Here’s a glance at what it looks like for those on the Windows 10 October 2018 Update:

We hope you like the changes, and if you have any further feedback about search, let us know!

As usual, there are a couple of quality fixes in this new build, including a fix preventing Insiders to setup Windows Hello in Settings in recent builds. Moreover, starting with this build Microsoft is making its Connect app available as an optional download in the Windows 10 Settings app. You can learn more about bug fixes, changes and known issues in our separate post.

If you’ve been encountering issues during the installation of the latest “Patch Tuesday” update for Windows 10 version 1903, you’re not alone. As reported by Windows Latest, many users have been sharing on Reddit and Microsoft’s Community website that they’re currently unable to install this latest patch and seeing error codes such as 0x800f0982, 0xe0000100, or 0x80073701.

Microsoft has yet to acknowledge these installation issues, but some users have also been complaining about random reboot issues on Reddit. Again, Microsoft hasn’t mentioned it as one of the known issues for the latest Windows 10 1903 build, and and it’s still hard to know if these installation and reboot issues are really widespread. So far, we haven’t seen encountered them on our non-Insider PCs.

Microsoft is now pretty quick to indicate any problems affecting the different versions of Windows 10 on the new Windows 10 Health Dashboard, and the company also releases one or two optional patches with several fixes between the monthly “Patch Tuesday” updates. Again, it’s not clear if these issues are affecting a lot users right now, but in the meantime it might be a good idea to wait before installing the latest Patch Tuesday, or roll back to the previous build if you encounter the random reboots issue.

Despite an industry trend of slowing PC sales over the past few years, Lenovo is posting its eighth consecutive quarter of revenue growth as its personal computer division has become responsible for much of the heavy lifting in sales.

In a letter to investors, Lenovo announced that for its FY19/20 quarter the company reached $12.5 billion in revenue with a pre-tax income that more than doubled is year-over-year growth totaling $240 million and $162 million in net income. With returns doubling for the year, investors are should see earnings per share increase $1.37.

“This fiscal year kicked off to an excellent start. Once again, this quarter’s strong results provided solid evidence that Lenovo’s Intelligent Transformation is enabling the company to drive sustainable, profitable growth in today’s dynamic and changing world. Our persistent execution and operational efficiency allow us to bring our vision to life and deliver smarter technology for all,” said Yang Yuanqing, Lenovo Chairman and CEO.

As mentioned earlier, Lenovo’s growth seems largely propelled by the company’s PC efforts, to which the company makes a note in its investor’s letter.

In PCs, volume outgrew the market, which as a whole is experiencing a recovery, by over 13 points, and the group hit an all-time record PC market share of 24.9%. This means one in every four PCs built in the world is a Lenovo PC – cementing Lenovo’s position as the worldwide number one in PCs.

Lenovo is also slowly making inroads with both its Mobile Business Group (MBG) and Intelligent Devices Group both seeing pre-tax income growth to the tune of $100 million and $524 million respectively. Even though it seems as if Lenovo has all but given up on smartphones in the US, the company also highlights that the MBG division “will continue to maintain profitability and seek opportunities to drive profitable growth in new markets and new innovated products.”

Perhaps, in preparation of the looming trade wars the US has engaged in with several countries, Lenovo also bookended its investors call with a warning of increased prices on PC, smartphones and various IoT devices resulting in negative effects on the investors, the extent wasn’t clarified but presumably a hike in prices will undoubtedly slow down the company’s current growth.

Halo developer 343 Industries announced yesterday they’re sunsetting the Halo app for Windows 10, effective today, August 16. The app will no longer be updated with new content related to Halo and HCS news, though the team noted that Halo Wars 2 game starts will continue to appear in the app until February 16, 2020.

As we look to the future and future projects, we have to say goodbye to some existing ones. Today, we are letting you know of plans to officially sunset the Halo App for Windows PC beginning August 16. Read more: https://t.co/MJAh1ynqCS pic.twitter.com/HKH4hqHQsx

— Halo (@Halo) August 15, 2019

If you ignored that Microsoft had released a Halo app on the Microsoft Store, you’re probably not alone. In addition to providing news, videos, tutorials, and more, the app also served as a launcher for the few Halo games available on Windows 10 such as Halo Wars 2, Halo: Spartan Strike, and Halo 5: Forge.

It’s worth noting that this Halo app is not to be confused with the Halo Channel app, which is a companion app for Halo 5: Guardians and Halo: The Master Chief Collection. The latter is still available on Windows 10, Xbox One, as well as iOS and Android, and it’s not being discontinued for now.

343 Industries is currently hard at work on bringing Halo: The Master Chief Collection on PC, as well as the next episode named Halo: Infinite. Earlier this week, the Halo developer also announced that the RTS game Halo Wars 2 won’t receive any new updates as 343 Industries is now fully focused on the two aforementioned projects.

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Halo Channel

Developer:
Microsoft Studios

Price:
Free

Earlier today, the Plex Media Player app was completely removed from the Windows 10 Microsoft Store app store and it was announced that support for it would completely end by January of next year.

This doesn’t mean that Plex’s support for Windows 10 devices is ending though. On the contrary, this removal was part of a renewed focus on the platform that also includes the launch of a brand new Plex app designed for desktop.

“It’s been a little broken for a while now,” the announcement on the official Plex blog explains. “Back when we first started developing Windows apps, it made a ton of sense to embrace the ecosystem, but over time (???? Windows Phone ????) it made less and less sense to keep investing dedicated development resources to the Metro [sic] platform. We’d much rather invest the effort on a cross-platform app with a best-in-class player engine under the hood, so as of today we’re taking our Windows app out of the store.”

Essentially, Windows 10 users will still be able to use the Plex service. They’ll just need to download the new app (here) going forward.

The new Plex desktop app contains almost all of the functionality of the Microsoft Store app though the TV layout option has been abandoned. They reason behind this decision, according to the announcement, was basically just to encourage more users to use the native Plex apps designed for smart TVs and streaming boxes which they claim work better than mirroring a PC on a TV screen.

None of this news affects the Xbox One Plex app, which is completely separate from the Windows 10 one. The launch of this new desktop app also doesn’t mean that Plex has abandoned the Microsoft Store platform either.

“We don’t have any immediate plans to bring the new app to the Microsoft Store,” the official statement reads. “That said, we’ve also definitely not ruled out that possibility.”

Are you disappointed by the death of the old app? Share your thoughts with the community in the comments below and then follow us on Twitter for more Windows news.

As Square Enix is getting ready to release the episode 4 of Life is Strange 2 on Xbox One and other platforms next week, the third episode released back in May is now playable with Xbox Game Pass (via Reddit). Earlier this year, Square Enix announced that future Life is Strange 2 episodes would join Xbox Game Pass 3 months after their release, which means that episode 4 should join Xbox Game Pass in November of this year.

Episodic games like Life is Strange 2 are a great fit for game subscription services like Xbox Game Pass, though developer Dontnot Enternaintment is taking its time to complete the second main entry of the series. The first episode of Life is Strange 2 was released back in September 2018, and the fifth and final episode is expected to be released on December 3, 2019. That’s an awfully long time to wait, though it’s not as bad as Square Enix get people to talk about the game every couple of months.

Here’s the official description for the game’s third episode:

After their narrow escape from Beaver Creek, Sean and Daniel’s dangerous journey to Mexico continues. This episode, the brothers reunite with Cassidy and Finn in California, befriend a community of drifters who live on the fringes of society, and try to scrape together money working on an illegal farm.

New friendships and relationships create friction, and put the brothers’ unity to the test. As tensions rise, can their strong bond survive?

Square Enix has been an early supporter of Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass game subscription service, bringing many of its high-profile games such as Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Just Cause 4 to the Game Pass catalog just a couple months after their official debut. However, the publisher has yet to bring its games to the new Xbox Game Pass for PC.

Microsoft is expected to announce new Xbox Game Pass games on Monday during a special Inside Xbox episode live from Gamescom. The livestream will kick off at 5 p.m. CEST / 11 a.m. ET on Mixer, Twitch, and YouTube.

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Life is Strange 2 – Episode 3

Developer:
Square Enix

Price:
$7.99

Microsoft is getting ready to release the Windows Virtual Desktop—or WVD for short—to the general public, as the service has become “feature complete,” according to its group manager Scott Manchester.

We are feature complete with #WVD and will be moving to the final phase for GA. Spin up your VMs and start testing your scenarios. Got issues? Engage our community: https://t.co/2amQHtQqwI #WVD #Azure #Microsoft

— Scott Manchester (@RDS4U) August 13, 2019

The service has been in public preview since March, and allows testers to virtualize Windows 7 and 10, Office 365 ProPlus, and other apps and software from within their Azure virtual machines. Additionally, it will also support multiple sessions of Windows 10 as well as Windows Server RDS desktop and its apps.

Microsoft still has yet to provide the availability date and pricing details, but users will need an current Azure subscription and to set up a virtual machine with the amount of storage they need. ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley suggests that the release could happen by the end of September 2019 as per information from her contacts.

On an interesting note, users of the WVD are also expected to be able to virtualize Windows 7 desktops as well. The company will continue to provide security updates for Windows 7 after its discontinuation in January of 2020, thanks to free Extended Security Update support all the way through January 2023.

Is the WVD something you or your company can benefit from? Feel free to share what you think in the comment area below.