Windows 10 Redstone 3 is here

Windows 10 Creators Update (aka Redstone 2) is set to start rolling out next week, but Microsoft is today releasing the first Insider Preview build for the upcoming Windows 10 update — codenamed Redstone 3.

Microsoft is releasing Windows 10 build 16170, and it is the first Redstone 3 build that’s been released to Windows Insiders. Build 16170, however, isn’t the first Redstone 3 build — Microsoft has actually started compiling Redstone 3 builds since February, and build 15141 is one of the first Redstone 3 builds Microsoft compiled.

Build 16170 is obviously a huge bump in terms of the build number, at least for Insiders. The last Insider Preview build was 15063, which is actually the RTM build for Windows 10 Creators Update (Redstone 2). But don’t get too excited: the first build of Redstone 3 doesn’t actually include anything ground-breaking.

And that isn’t anything surprising to see. That’s because Microsoft is currently working on improving OneCore and refactoring some of its code for Redstone 3. In other words, Microsoft has just started working on Redstone 3, so it will be a few months until the exciting things start showing up in the Windows Insider program. As for now, Microsoft will likely only release minor bug fixes and improvements for the OS with the upcoming Redstone 3 builds.

Redstone 3 is expected to bring a lot of new things to Windows 10, including a new design language, the return of OneDrive Placeholders, MyPeople (which was one of the features that got cut from Redstone 2), and probably a lot more. The development of Redstone 3 will get pretty exciting over the next few months and we should get a much close look at everything Microsoft is working on for Redstone 3 next month at Build 2017 in Seattle. We’ll be covering the event live from Seattle, so stay tuned to MSPU for all the latest news on Windows 10 and Redstone 3.

You can find the full changelog for build 16170 here.