With Windows 10 1909 coming, Windows 10 20H1 hits major milestone
Microsoft is expected to release Windows 10 version 1909 imminently and with that milestone approaching, the company has now pushed its first Windows 10 20H1 build to the more stable Windows Insider Slow Ring.
Windows 10
There's plenty of backstory to the confusing changes that started when Microsoft began preview testing Windows 10 builds from the 20H1 branch. Microsoft first began offering 20H1 builds to users in the Skip Ahead portion of the Fast Ring this February.
Curiously, it did this even before it had finished testing Windows 10 19H1 and before it began releasing preview builds from the 19H2 branch – aka version 1909 or the November 2019 Update, which is due for release to the general public any moment now.
SEE: 20 pro tips to make Windows 10 work the way you want (free PDF)
According to ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley, the main purpose of this shift was to support Microsoft's own core engineering teams, by aligning Windows 10 release schedules between Azure and Windows engineering.
Then in April Microsoft merged Skip Ahead and Fast Ring testers so that both groups were testing Windows 10 20H1. Previously, the Fast Ring would have been testing 19H2, which at that point still hadn't been released in preview.
And last week Microsoft killed off the Skip Ahead ring for good and merged these testers with those in the Fast Ring because it wanted everyone in the Fast Ring to have the newest builds at the same time.
Now that the Windows 10 November 2019 Update is about to be released, Microsoft is moving the Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19013.1122 (20H1) to testers in the Slow ring.
Microsoft released this build to the Fast Ring in late October and says the build for the Slow ring includes a fix for a bug that was causing the Settings app to hang or crash when accessing the System or Ease of Access sections.
Windows 10 20H1 introduces Cortana as a standalone app, improvements to Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 including Arm64 support, the ability to sign into a device with a Windows Hello PIN, and faster Bluetooth pairing with keyboards and Microsoft mouse devices.