Microsoft releases Windows 10 Build 17040 for Insiders on the Fast Ring

Microsoft has released a new build of Windows 10 for Insiders on the Fast Ring, taking it up to  17040. There aren’t any huge changes in this build, merely refinements to the settings app, and input and display improvements. Naturally, there are a few bugs that might get under your skin. You won’t be able to invoke the properties sub-menu in File Explorer, you might also fail to receive all notifications from Cortana, among others. If these are huge issues for you, you may want to skip this build.

Here’s what’s new according to Microsoft’s Dona Sarkar:

• Settings Improvements: Adjust the brightness of SDR content on your HDR display: Starting with Build 17040, Windows now lets you adjust how bright SDR content appears when running in HDR mode on the desktop. On an HDR capable system, you will see a slider in the “HDR and advanced color settings” page under Settings > System > Display. This is one of the improvements to HDR image quality that we have planned based on feedback from Insiders.
• New Cursor, pointer, and touch feedback section in Ease of Access Settings: Continuing our recent efforts to reorganize this section in Settings, you’ll notice that “change cursor thickness”, “Change pointer size and color”, and “Change touch feedback” have been moved to this new place.
  Touch keyboard Improvements: Shape-writing with wide touch keyboard: With the Fall Creators Update we introduced shape-writing input for one-handed keyboard. We’ve heard your feedback, and with today’s build we’re happy to announce that it’s now also available when using the wide keyboard!
  Handwriting panel Improvements: Improved Insertion Gesture: Based on your feedback about gesture recognition, we’ve updated the insertion gesture (to add space between words or letters) to now be a small caret (see below gif for a demo of what it looks like, along with a cameo of our joining gesture).
• A New Commit Gesture: We’ve added a new gesture so you can automatically commit your text and clear out the text in the handwriting panel. This gesture looks like a 90 degree angle bracketing the end of your text – see gif below for an example of how it works.
• Improved button layout for Chinese (Simplified) Handwriting: If you use Chinese (Simplified), you’ll now see a layout similar to the one announced for other languages with Build 17035. The buttons in the handwriting panel are collapsed by default – tap the button with the ellipsis to expand them.

You can see the new changelog here, and download the update from Windows Update.