Skip to main content

Make the most of your time with the new Windows 10 update.

To help ensure the best experience, the update will roll out automatically when your PC is ready. Can’t wait? Learn more about the update and find out how you can get it now.

We all get the same 24 hours. And now, more than ever, it seems like it’s never enough. People feel more overwhelmed than ever before and pretty much all of us would love more time – not necessarily time to do more, but time to do what we love. At Microsoft, we want to help you do just that.

Laptop open on a table

With Windows 10, we’ve focused on delivering the most modern and most secure operating system. Since its initial launch, we delivered two updates with features designed to enable the creator in each of us. With our latest major release – the Windows 10 April 2018 Update – we want to give you back some of your greatest currency, your time. Our hope is that you’ll have more time to do what matters most to you –  create, play, work or simply do what you love.

Timeline helps you easily find what matters to you across your devices.

The proliferation of devices, combined with the explosion of information, has led to an influx of screen time. In fact, today, practically all free time goes toward screens. Your information is spread across multiple devices – making it increasingly harder to find your stuff. We’ve all had the experience of digging through your email or file folders for the document you know you wrote, but can’t find. Or looking for photos and videos that you know you’ve seen and love, but can no longer locate. Timeline can help you get back this wasted time.

With Timeline, your Windows 10 PC lets you go back in time up to 30 days to find your stuff, whether you were working on it earlier today, last week, or a few weeks ago. Because much of our activity is on the go, you can even pick up what you were doing if signed into your Microsoft account while using Microsoft Edge or Office 365 on your iOS or Android device when you return to your Windows 10 PC. Imagine looking at bathroom vanity options for that home remodel when you’re out and about on your phone, and then finishing that purchase when you’re back at your PC. Or working on a document on the bus during your commute and seamlessly picking it back up when you’re at your desk.

Focus Assist returns your focus

Today, most of us spend between 3-6 hours – each day – on screens. Much of this time is spent on social media, where the constant stream of distractions across our myriad of devices makes it hard to focus. In many ways, our attention is being hacked, pulling us into continuous scrolls of information, but distracting us from what matters most. This war on attention is real – in the workplace, the average amount of time people spend on any single event before being interrupted or switching tasks is about three minutes (outside of meetings). Since the average person needs about 23 minutes to regroup after being interrupted, we see our productivity and creativity diminished.

With the April 2018 Update we’re introducing Focus Assist to help you stay in the zone. Turn on Focus Assist whenever you want to get things done without distractions, like social media or other notifications. Or set it to turn on automatically at certain times during the day when you want focused time. When you finish, you receive a summary of what came through, whether notifications, emails or updates, while you were heads down. If you’re waiting on a specific call or email, choose people who you want to break through.

We’re also helping you focus while on the web with updates to Microsoft Edge. You can now click the audio icon to mute and unmute a tab that is playing sound. Books, PDFs and Reading View pages can go full-screen for a distraction-free reading experience. Shopping gets easier as your address, payment and other information can be securely saved with the option to autofill on web payment forms1. You can now clear out clutter from your printouts by printing web pages in a cleaner format with the new clutter-free printing option2. Finally, anyone needing a little help with reading can use the new Grammar Tools button to enable comprehension aids. Grammar Tools can break the words on the page into syllables, as well as highlight different parts of speech such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives.

Voice as a natural input

Natural computing experiences enable us to speak directly to our devices to accomplish tasks, without typing. We see potential for voice input to dramatically change how people interact with their devices, far beyond novelty experiences or entertainment.

One way we’ve done this in the April 2018 Update is with Dictation. It’s now easier than ever to take a note or write a paper, with just your voice. With your cursor in any text field either in Windows 10 or in an app, simply press Win+H and start talking. The improved Dictation feature in Windows 10 will capture your thoughts quickly and accurately so that brilliant idea you just riffed on with your colleagues or the speech you’re practicing for your best friend’s wedding isn’t lost forever.

With the April 2018 Update and Cortana enabled on your Windows 10 PC, you can manage your smart home right from your PC using just your voice3. For example, want to come home to a warm house from a long day at work? Just tap Cortana on your PC and say “Hey Cortana, set the living room thermostat to 72 degrees” to control your ecobee, Honeywell, Nest Learning thermostat and more4.

Of course, there are many more great new features in the April 2018 Update including simplified IT management tools for our enterprise customers, new ways to create with Photos, 3D and Windows Mixed Reality, new ways to keep you safer online and enhancements to your PC gaming experience.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How to change the size of the touch and on-screen keyboard in Windows 10

Windows 10 PCs come with two keyboard apps, one is the OnScreen Keyboard , and the other is the Touch Keyboard . Basically, you don't need a touch screen to use the on-screen keyboard. It displays a virtual keyboard on the screen and you can use the mouse to select and press the keys. Although the on-screen keyboard app is very useful when we don't have a physical keyboard, its size is always a problem for users. You can move or enlarge the virtual keyboard from the icons in the upper right corner. If you want, you can also easily resize it. Changing the size of the on-screen keyboard is very easy. Type On-Screen Keyboard in your Windows search and run the desktop app, or you can also go via Settings > Ease of Access > Keyboard> Turn on the On-screen keyboard.   To change the size of the on-screen keyboard, move the cursor to the corner and drag it to the desired size. Resizing the touch keyboard is as simple as doing it! Just drag it and resize it us

Designing the Windows 8 touch keyboard.

When we began planning how touch and new types of PCs might work on Windows 8, we recognized the need to provide an effective method for text entry on tablets and other touch screen PCs. Since Windows XP SP1, which had Tablet PC features built in, Windows has included a touchable on-screen keyboard. But those features were designed as extensions to the desktop experience.  For Windows 8, we set out to improve on that model and introduce text input support that meets people’s needs, matches our design principles, and works well with the form factors we see today and expect to see in the future. I’m writing this blog post on our Windows 8 touch keyboard using the standard QWERTY layout in English. As I look at it, the keyboard seems very simple and sort of obvious. This comes partly from having worked on it for a while, but also because keyboards are familiar to us. But there is more here than meets the eye (or, fingertips). We started planning this feature area with no preconcei

How to install offline .NET Framework 3.5 on Windows 10 using DISM.

Windows 10 comes with .NET framework 4.5 pre-installed, but many apps developed in Vista and Windows 7 era require the .NET framework v3.5 installed along with 4.5. These apps will not run unless you will install the required version. When you try to run any such app, Windows 10 will prompt you to download and install .NET framework 3.5 from the Internet. However, this will take a lot of time. You can save your time and install .NET Framework 3.5 from the Windows 10 installation media. This method is much faster and does not even require an Internet connection. Here is how to install it. How to install offline .NET Framework 3.5 on Windows 10 using DISM. Contents: [ hide ] How to install offline .NET Framework 3.5 on Windows 10 using DISM. To install .NET Framework 3.5 in Windows 10, do the following: Insert your Windows 10 DVD, or double click its ISO image, or insert your bootable flash drive with Windows 10, depending on what you have. Open 'This PC' in File