Windows 10 Creators

Microsoft will distribute the final version of the Windows 10 Creators Update to testers by the end of the month, sources familiar with the company’s plans. The software giant is currently in the final phases of development, but has not publicly revealed a date for when the Creators Update will be made available broadly. Internally, the company is targeting early April for fully compatible devices, with a staggered rollout throughout April.

Windows Central reported earlier this week that Microsoft is planning to distribute release candidates of the final version of the Windows 10 Creators Update to testers next week, with a public release on April 11th. Once a final version is selected, testers will have access to it by the end of March. Microsoft will also prepare a number of patches for the Windows 10 Creators Update, to address minor issues that aren’t fixed in the bigger release. Microsoft has previously promised to be more transparent about these updates to ensure users aren’t rebooting many times after the Creators Update begins rolling out.

Windows-10-creators-update

Microsoft is adding a number of new features to Windows 10 Creators Update, including a new Game Mode, 3D Paint, mixed reality headsets support, a picture-in-picture mode, and improvements to Microsoft Edge’s tab mode. Microsoft originally promised an overhaul of the taskbar with a People bar, but the company has delayed this feature to a second update planned later this year.

What The Windows 10 Creators update all about?

Here are some of the changes you will notice when you install the new Windows 10 Creators update:

More privacy Windows collects a good deal of information on what users are doing when they run Windows 10 and Microsoft has never been clear on exactly what data it collects and what it does with it.

Privacy advocates and many in the tech press have criticized Microsoft for this, and it appears that the company has been listening. In a blog post last month Windows boss Terry Myerson said “we’re launching a new web-based privacy dashboard so you can see and control your activity data from Microsoft including location, search, browsing, and Cortana Notebook data across multiple Microsoft services. Second, we’re introducing in Windows 10 a new privacy set up experience, simplifying Diagnostic data levels and further reducing the data collected at the Basic level.”

It’s hard to know just what the dashboard will look like, and more importantly, how effective it and other features will prove to be. This is an area that really needs attention, so I’m hoping that Microsoft actually delivers some improvements in the Windows 10 Creators update.