





Hello Windows Insiders!

Today we are excited to release Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16257 for PC to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring and also in Skip Ahead! We are also releasing Windows 10 Mobile Insider Preview Build 15237 to Insiders in the Fast ring.

We won’t have a new Windows Server Insider Preview build for Windows Insiders this week.

What’s New in Build 16257 For PC

Eye Control (beta)

Yesterday, we announced Eye Control, which makes Windows 10 more accessible by empowering people with disabilities to operate an on-screen mouse, keyboard, and text-to-speech experience using only their eyes. The experience requires a compatible eye tracker, like the Tobii Eye Tracker 4C, which unlocks access to the Windows operating system to be able to do the tasks one could previously accomplish with a physical mouse and keyboard. We are starting by supporting the EN-US keyboard layout, and we are looking to expand to more keyboard layouts in the future. We are excited to release this experience as a beta and would love your feedback!

Setting up Eye Control:

Own or purchase a Tobii Eye Tracker 4C (Coming next will be support for Tobii Dynavox PCEye Mini, PCEyePlus, EyeMobile Plus, and I-series.)

Download and update to Tobii’s Core eye tracking hot fix release 2.10.11.6458 and run calibration with your own profile

Check for Windows Updates; the new Tobii Eye Tracker HIDClass Driver should be found on Windows Update and installed automatically.

Make sure your Tobii eye tracker is connected to your PC and turn on Eye Control by going to Settings > Ease of Access > Other Options > Eye control.

Eye Control launchpad – When you turn on Eye Control, the launchpad will appear on the screen. This allows you to access the mouse, keyboard, text-to-speech, and to reposition the UI to the opposite side of the screen.

Eye Control interaction model – To interact with the UI for Eye Control, simply look at the UI with your eyes until the button activates. A visual affordance will appear around the UI that you are looking at.

Eye Control mouse – To control the mouse, select the mouse from the launchpad, position your eyes on the screen where you want the cursor to be placed, fine tune the position, and select what action you want to take (left click, double left click, right click, or cancel).

Eye Control keyboard – To use the keyboard, select the keyboard from the launchpad, and dwell at the characters you want to type. You can type numbers and symbols on the &123 page and function keys on the Fn page. We currently support the EN-US keyboard layout.

Eye Control shape-writing – Type faster with your eyes by shape-writing on the Eye Control keyboard. To use shape writing, turn it on from the keyboard settings (found on the Fn page). Once it is on, you can form words by dwelling at the first and last character of the word, and simply glancing at letters in between. A hint of the word predicted will appear on the last key of the word. If the prediction was incorrect, you can simply select an alternative prediction provided.

Eye Control text-to-speech – Communicate with your family and friends in person by using text-to-speech. To use text-to-speech, select text-to-speech from the launchpad. From here, you can use the keyboard to type sentences and have it spoken aloud. At the top are phrases that are spoken aloud immediately and can be edited to say different words. This uses the default text-to-speech voices, which can be changed in Settings > Time & Language > Speech > Text-to-speech.

Eye Control settings – Access settings from the Fn keyboard page to adjust the dwell times, turn on/off shape-writing, and turn on/off the gaze cursor used to test hardware calibration.

Known Issues:

Eye tracking does not work well in direct sunlight. The device may require new calibration when moving to a location with different lighting conditions.

The launchpad partially blocks the Tobii UI during device calibration. To work around this, turn off Eye Control during calibration and turn it back on when you are done. You can also use touch or mouse to reposition the UI during calibration.

Sometimes shape-writing can get stuck on. You can fix this by dwelling at the shape-writing icon to turn it on and off again

Sometimes the reposition UI icon in the launchpad takes focus after exiting text-to-speech

Hardware support:

Currently, Eye Control works with select Tobii hardware. We are open to working with additional hardware vendors to provide customers a broader set of hardware options to enable this experience.

To learn more:

If you have questions or feedback on how we can continue to improve our products and services, you can also contact us through the Disability Answer Desk (now with ASL support) and Accessibility User Voice Forum. You can learn more about accessibility at Microsoft by visiting, http://microsoft.com/accessibility.

Microsoft Edge Improvements

We’re giving Microsoft Edge a refreshed and more modern look in the browser frame, inspired by the Fluent Design System. The use of Acrylic material provides depth and transparency to the tab bar and other controls, and we’ve improved button animations to feel more responsive and delightful.

Based on your feedback we’ve adjusted the design of the address bar so now even if the address bar isn’t in focus to start with when you click and drag the text it will remain under the cursor. Previously the text would shift as the “http://” appeared – this change will make it easier to quickly edit parts of the URL.

We fixed an issue where right-clicking on an image in Microsoft Edge and selecting copy then later pasting the clipboard content would result in the image URL being pasted rather than the image itself.

We fixed an issue where if a tab had been opened while Microsoft Edge was in full screen mode, using Ctrl + W to close that tab while still in full screen mode would close the content but leave the tab in the frame.

We fixed an issue where if you had two unrelated tabs in Microsoft Edge and opened a link from the first in a new tab, the new tab would appear to the right of the second tab rather than the first.

Console Improvements

During the Creators Update development we updated the Windows Console to support full 24-bit RGB color and today the Windows Console’s default colors are getting their first overhaul in more than 20 years! Yay!

The default color values have been changed to improve legibility of darker colors on modern screens, and to give the Console a more modern look & feel.

To preserve your preferences, this new color scheme will only be visible in Properties if you clean install this build. For more details about Windows Console, head to the Command Line Blog.

Input Improvements

We’ve improved the performance of launching the touch keyboard after tapping the touch keyboard button in the taskbar.

We fixed an issue where using WIN+H to dictate into a UWP app’s text field wasn’t working.

We fixed an issue resulting in the Japanese IME prediction candidates position being shifted and overlapping with typed text if you set the page zoom level to something other than “100%” in Microsoft Edge.

We’ve adjusted the design of the Japanese curve-flick touch keyboard to display numbers and English letter keys in a smaller font that’s more consistent with the size of the Japanese character keys.

Windows Defender Application Guard (WDAG) Improvements

We have added new status strings to the WDAG splash dialog to provide more information about the startup stages for WDAG. These new strings will be displayed to users when WDAG is starting up and when it’s being resumed from a paused state.

We have also made significant improvements to container launch times by optimizing background preparation of the WDAG container.

We fixed a number of issues that were impacting networking inside the WDAG container as well as a poor user experience when connecting to the WDAG container.

Fixed an issue where the WDAG launch resulted in Error Codes 0x02 / 0x00 or 0x02 / 0c.

Fixed an issue where only part of the WDAG window was being displayed after launch.

Added a registry key to allow users to optimize WDAG launch times during active browsing by not suspending the WDAG container when the WDAG window is closed. You can set the registry key to optimize for performance here: Computer\HKLM\Software\Microsoft\HVSI\, Value name: SuspendOnContainerClosed, REG_DWORD, Value data: 1. Note: Setting this key will result in the container not pausing and the container will not release committed memory.

General changes, improvements, and fixes for PC

We fixed an issue where the battery flyout might have shown unexpected text for the % charged (specifically “%1!s!%2!s!% until fully charged”).

We’ve fixed an issue resulting in certain network setting being lost on upgrade and reverting to default. Specifically, static IP address configuration was reverted to DHCP, and networks marked private were reverted to public.

If you had installed Builds 16226-16237 and had found Storage Spaces to not be working, today’s build expands upon the fix in 16241 to remediate those PCs that had upgraded from the impacted build range and were still in a bad state. Thanks again to the Insiders that have helped us investigate this!

We fixed an issue where if you switched to a new tab and back in Microsoft Edge, Narrator would start reading from the top of the page again, rather than remember where you had been on the page.

We fixed an issue where right-clicking on a folder in File Explorer and saying Scan with Windows Defender wouldn’t work if the folder name contained #.

We fixed a rare issue where the Windows Search Service might get stuck on initialization after upgrade, resulting in File Explorer showing “Working on it…” infinitely when accessing certain folders.

We fixed an issue resulting in certain games such as Wargaming’s World of Tanks, World of Warships, and World of Warplanes appearing to hang/freeze shortly after launch when played on x86 PCs in recent flights.

We fixed an issue where some Insiders were not being offered builds higher than Build 16241.

We fixed an issue where connecting to a VPN using a solution downloaded from the Windows Store may result in a system crash.

Known issues for PC

Start, Action Center and notification toasts may at times have a background that is 100% transparent. A fix will be available in later flight – for now, if you encounter this issue, try ending ShellExperienceHost.exe via Task Manager or rebooting to resolve the issue.

We’re investigating reports where Action Center shows it has some number of notifications but when you click to open Action Center, there are no notifications shown.

We’re investigating reports that suggested apps are visible in Start despite the related setting being off. For now, if you encounter this please try toggling Settings > Personalization > Start > “Occasionally show suggestions in Start”.

When installing or updating a Windows Store app, you may see error 80070057. As a workaround, you can get the latest app by uninstalling the older version of the app from your device and reinstall latest version from Store.

ADDED 8/3: The Virus and Threat Protection pillar in Windows Defender Security Center will show as “unknown” after upgrading to this build. We are investigating. The workaround is the reboot your PC and then Windows Defender Security Center will display the correct status.

General changes, improvements, and fixes for Mobile

We made some improvements to the Field Medic Store app, where we fixed an issue with collecting Watson crash data, enabled spell checking when editing a report, and updated the PowerOn/PowerOff profiles to include additional battery info.

We fixed an issue where the screen would occasionally flash black after launching or rotating the Camera app.

We fixed an issue with the HP Elite X3 reporting that the SD card had been removed from the device when it had not.

We fixed an issue with Continuum where, after the attached monitor is unplugged, occasionally the mobile LCD does not power off and the mobile battery could be drained.

We fixed an issue with the Windows inbox NFC driver where occasionally the wrong card type data was reported.

We improved the Cortana resume-from-suspend behavior to enable a Cortana skill to be authenticated before the user interacts with the skill.

We fixed an issue with the behavior of the hardware search button in countries where Cortana is not available. In this case, the OEM provides the search app or URI.

Known issues for Mobile

There is a problem with the HP Elite X3 with wired docks where the portrait orientation setting is lost when the external display is disconnected and reconnected. A workaround for this is to reboot the phone after tapping the “OK” button instead of disconnecting and reconnecting. This workaround must be performed every time you connect to an external display you want to use with Continuum in portrait orientation.

If you have apps saved to your SD card, you may see error 8007000B when trying to update those apps. As a workaround, you can move these apps to internal memory, update them, and then move them back to your SD card. Thank you to all the Insiders who reported this to us!

When installing or updating a Windows Store app, you may see error 80070057. As a workaround, you can get the latest app by uninstalling the older version of the app from your device and reinstall latest version from Store.

Support for 3D in Office apps

Windows Insiders who are also Office Insiders will be able to incorporate 3D objects in Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Easily insert a 3D object from the Remix 3D catalog or your PC, change its perspective and use transitions like Morph in PowerPoint to create cinematic animations between slides to bring 3D objects in your presentations to life.

Not an Office Insider? Sign-up here!

Community & Team Updates

We have some updates to our team!

Joining team “Something Happened” are:

Marissa Zhang – Marissa, our intern, is reporting to Jason this summer and she is working on Insider communication channels. LinkedIn? Instagram? Forums? She is helping us choose the channels and what kind of content we want to show on each!

Vivek Elangovan – Vivek is a software engineer AND a film-maker who just finished his first feature film. He’s helping us talk to the creatives, artists, film-makers, VR designers in our Insider audience and make sure their voices are heard in product development as well! He is also going to lead the charge on app flighting.

As a reminder, the rest of the team and what they work on are:

Tyler Ahn – leads the Insider MVP program, our website development (and soon forums) and the global Windows fan programs.

– leads the Insider MVP program, our website development (and soon forums) and the global Windows fan programs. Jason Howard – leads debugging Insider issues on social and forums and is the resident Webcast MixerMaster.

– leads debugging Insider issues on social and forums and is the resident Webcast MixerMaster. Jeremiah Marble – is our program architect who figures out what more we can be doing for our various Insider audiences.

– is our program architect who figures out what more we can be doing for our various Insider audiences. Brandon LeBlanc – works with all the product teams to write content for our blogs, websites, Feedback Hub, etc for Insiders. Also has the best Star Trek outfit collection on earth!

– works with all the product teams to write content for our blogs, websites, Feedback Hub, etc for Insiders. Also has the best Star Trek outfit collection on earth! Dona Sarkar – wrangles the product teams into making sure the right bugs are fixed and causes general chaos.

– wrangles the product teams into making sure the right bugs are fixed and causes general chaos. Blair Glennon – is Lord of Insider Data. He works with the Data Science team to understand the telemetry, feedback and survey results from Insiders and make recommendations as well as leading WIP4Biz.

One more thing – this month’s webcast on Mixer will be focused on our Engineering Systems. This includes the building of the Windows OS, code-flow processes, ISOs, symbols, our migration to Git, and much more. We’d love to take your questions in advance so we can try to address them in the webcast. Click here to submit your questions!

No downtime for Hustle-As-A-Service,

Dona <3