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New Windows 10 19H1 test build adds more Notepad features, other tweaks

The latest Windows 10 Fast Ring test build, No. 18298, adds a bunch of new Notepad features, alongside other relatively minor feature and settings updates.
Written by Mary Jo Foley, Senior Contributing Editor

Microsoft's latest Windows 10 19H1 test build adds more new features to Notepad. It also includes other sign-in, File Explorer, touch keyboard and other updates. Microsoft released the latest Fast Ring Insider test build, No. 18298, on December 10.

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Credit: Microsoft

Today's test build includes a promised Windows Update notification. Whenever a device has an update requiring a reboot (in both mainstream and test builds), users will see the Power button in the Start menu include an orange indicator alerting users to restart their devices.

With this build, Microsoft now includes Feedback Hub integration directly in Notepad. Notepad now shows an asterisk (*) in the title bar in front of a title of any document which includes unsaved changes. This new build also includes improvements to the way Notepad handles UTF-8 encoding. This build also adds some additional Notepad short cuts and the ability to open and save files with a path longer than 260 characters.

Microsoft has added to its sign-in options the ability to set up a security key straight from settings with today's build. Microsoft is adding a new option to file downloads so that users can more easily find folders by seeing the most recently downloaded file at the top of the list.

Microsoft officials say they've updated the touch keyboard built into today's build in a way to allow faster typing with more accuracy.

There are a number of new and experimental console features in today's build, which merited their own blog post. Testers can try these out by opening the properties page of any Console window, and clicking on the additional "Terminal" tab.

There are a bunch of Narrator fixes and updates and ease-of-access improvements, including bigger and brighter cursor options in Build 18298. Feedback Hub is updated to version 1811 and includes some visual tweaks. The Snip & Sketch app also gets a bunch of fixes in today's build.

For a full list of fixes, updates and known issues in Build 18298, see the December 10 blog post about the build.

Microsoft is expected to release the Windows 10 19H1 release to mainstream users starting around April 2019. So far, most of the features Microsoft has introduced in test builds have been fairly minor.

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