Video: A sneak peak at notification syncing in the Windows 10 Action Center

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At Build 2016, Microsoft unveiled some of the new features coming to the Action Center in Windows 10. In a session yesterday, Microsoft’s Andrew Bares (ex MSPoweruser writer) and Thomas Fennel showed off the new features in action. One of the most notable features coming to the Action Center in Windows 10 are the new notification syncing capabilities, including Notification Mirroring and Universal Dismiss.

With Notification Mirroring, Windows 10 will show you the notifications from your Windows 10 Mobile or Android device on your Windows 10 PC. For example, if you get a notification from Twitter on your Windows 10 Mobile device or Android smartphone, it will show up on your Windows 10 PC (even if you don’t have Twitter installed on your Windows 10 PC). This feature is powered by Cortana in Android and Windows 10 Mobile, which is a bit interesting. As you may expect, notification mirroring supports interactive notifications as well, even with Android phones.

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Alongside Notification Mirroring, Microsoft will also introduce Universal Dismiss for notifications in Windows 10. Just like Notification Mirroring, Universal Dismiss is powered by Cortana, and it is available to Android and Windows 10 Mobile. With Universal Dismiss, Windows 10 will sync notification dismissals across your devices. For example, when you dismiss a notification on your Windows 10 PC, it will get dismissed on your Android phone, too.

Microsoft also stated that developer will not need to implement these features into their apps, and it will get automatically supported. However, Microsoft will allow developers to disable some notifications from getting mirrored, which is quite nice. If you want to implement Universal Dismiss, you will need to add a single line of code to your app.

As for iOS support, Microsoft is looking into ways of implementing these features. However, as the platform isn’t as opened as Android, the company isn’t able to integrate these features at the moment. Although the company did state that they are thinking about some of the “creative ways” of implementing it.

If you want to watch the full session, you can see watch it below for more info about the upcoming Action Center features:

Microsoft didn’t share when these features will be coming to Windows 10, other than the usual “future release” timeline. The company didn’t mention if this will be coming with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update — however, they will be sharing more info on the release date in a blog post sometime soon. What do you think of the upcoming Action Center features? Discuss in the comment section below.

More about the topics: action center, microsoft, Notification mirroring, Notification Syncing, Universal Dismiss, windows 10, Windows 10 Anniversary Update

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