Windows 10 Fall Creators Update: Everything you need to know

Windows 10 Fall Creators Update is the next big update for Microsoft’s operating system. The Fall Creators Update is the second Windows 10 update that’s focused on creativity, but it is still bringing a lot of new things for regular users. So what exactly is coming with the new Fall Creators Update this Fall? Here’s everything you need to know.

A new design

Remember Project NEON? It’s now official, and it has a new name: the Microsoft Fluent Design System. With the Microsoft Fluent Design System, Microsoft is effectively giving Windows a new look. It’s an enormous update, and it will take a long while before all the parts of the OS take advantage of the new design system. Microsoft has already rolled out some of the elements of Fluent Design in Windows 10 for those in the Windows Insider program, but the majority of the OS is still lacking the new design.

The new design focuses heavily on Acrylic (read: blur) and it works with other components of the system, including things like Light, Depth, Motion, Material, and Scale. At the moment, Windows 10 Insider Preview releases also include effects like Reveal and Connected Animations which provide an extra amount of fluidity to the apps.

My People

Windows 10’s new My People is finally coming with the Fall Creators Update. The feature was initially expected to arrive with the Creators Update back in April but it’s now coming with the Fall Creators Update instead. The new My People experience in Windows 10 gives you access to your most frequent contacts right from the taskbar of Windows 10. The feature can be disabled, so if you’re not a big fan of it, you can simply turn it off.

But if you choose to keep it turned on, you can do a lot of cool things. The feature lets you easily interact with your contacts via apps like Skype, Outlook Mail, and others. For instance, you can easily share a picture by dragging and dropping it from your desktop to a contact on the taskbar. You can also chat with them right from the taskbar which is actually really handy. Third-party developers can also integrate My People into their apps, which means apps like Facebook Messenger may also integrate with My People in the near-future.

OneDrive Placeholders are back

Microsoft is finally bringing back OneDrive Placeholders with the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. The company is calling the new feature “OneDrive Files on Demand” and it will allow you save space on your device by letting you view files when you need them. Rather than downloading all the files on your OneDrive, the Files on Demand feature will essentially download the files as you need them. OneDrive Files On-Demand is already available to Windows Insiders, and it also works better with the Universal Windows Apps now.

Pick Up Where You Left Off on phones

Microsoft is also evolving the Pick Up Where You Left Off feature with the Fall Creators Update in Windows 10. As you may remember, this feature actually launched with the Creators Update but Microsoft is making some updates to the feature to make it accessible to all Windows 10 users. With the upcoming Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, Pick Up Where You  Left Off will work across Windows, iOS, and Android thanks to Cortana. Using Pick Up Where You Left Off, users can start working on a document, app, or website on their PC and continue working on it from their phone which is really neat.

A new way of storytelling

Similar to the Windows 10 Creators Update, the Fall Creators Update will include another new creative app in Windows 10. This new creative experience in Windows 10’s Microsoft Photos app will allow users to “transform” their photos and videos. The app uses Microsoft Graph to automatically create Memories with your photos and videos — which you can share as a video with cinematic transitions, soundtrack, and theme. Moreover, Microsoft is also letting users add 3D objects to their videos and photos which will take things a step further for all of your posts on Facebook.

A new Action Center

Microsoft is also redesigning the Action Center in Windows 10. The new Action Center heavily uses Fluent Design’s Acrylic material, which makes it look a lot nicer than the current Action Center in Windows 10. The new design isn’t significantly different from the current one, but it includes some key changes. For example, Microsoft is adding a lot of padding to the notifications and it should now work much better on devices with a touch display. However, the notifications now take up a lot of space which means you don’t really get to see all of your notifications without scrolling down.

In addition to the improved design of the Action Center, Microsoft has also improved the design for the toast notifications. They are no longer attached to the Action Center itself, which actually looks way better than the current design. Just like the Action Center, the new toast notifications also take advantage of the Acrylic material from Fluent Design. It’s still a missing I and some other users have been requesting for a while: the ability to set the toast notification position on multi-monitor setups.

A built-in emoji picker and a new keyboard

With the Fall Creators Update, Microsoft is finally adding a built-in emoji picker to the Windows 10. That means you will longer need to open up the touch keyboard or search on Google/Bing for an emoji. Instead, you can just WIN + . or Win + ; to open up the emoji picker, search for an emoji, and voila.

Microsoft is also adding a brand new touch keyboard to Windows 10 with the Fall Creators Update. For one, the touch keyboard now supports swiping and if you have used the Windows Phone keyboard before, you will love the new one. Microsoft has added things like emoji prediction, a new one-handed touch mode, improved handwriting panel, and more as well for the Fall Creators Update.

Everything else

Windows 10 Fall Creators Update is a pretty huge update in terms of features. Microsoft has added a lot of little things to the OS that’ll be coming to everyone later this year. Here’s a quick list of some of the biggest things in the update:

• Start Menu now includes Fluent Design’s Acrylic material
• Microsoft Edge now supports fullscreen mode, lets you pin websites to the taskbar, and inking support for PDFs
• Find My Device now lets you find your pen/stylus and you can also now scroll with your pen/stylus
• Power Throttling 
• You can FINALLY see your GPU’s performance in the Task Manager
• UWP apps now work with the volume mixer
• Windows Defender Application Guard