WINDOWS 10 MAY 2019 UPDATE:

10 NOTABLE NEW FEATURES

By Mary Branscombe

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 WINDOWS 10 MAY 2019 UPDATE: 10 NOTABLE NEW FEATURES

INTRODUCTION
After the problems with the 1809 release, Microsoft is being rather more cautious with the next semi-annual
release of Windows 10. The release preview has been available since early April and it will stay in preview for
longer than usual—until late May, when the 18-month support period will begin. It will also give users more
control over when they install the update.
Getting an option for Download And Install Now in Windows Update and the ability to pause updates for
seven days at a time should remove a lot of frustration. There are a handful of welcome improvements as
well: the ability to uninstall more of the inbox apps, enhancements to the modern print dialogue, an icon that
appears when any applications are using the device microphone, tamper protection that ensures changes to
the Windows Security app are made only through the Windows Security app, and suggestions for fixes that
Windows can automatically apply to address problems. But perhaps because of the focus on quality or the
shorter support lifecycle for spring releases, Windows 10 1903 has fewer major new features than 1809.
Here are the ones you’ll likely want to upgrade for.

1. WINDOWS SANDBOX
When you want to run an application
without worrying about how the
installation will affect your PC, the new
Windows Sandbox lets you install it into
an isolated environment where it can’t
change defaults or leave components
that are difficult to uninstall. Once
you’re done using the application, you
can close the sandbox, and everything
associated with the app goes away.
Unlike a VM, it doesn’t need a whole
new copy of Windows (only about
100MB of files that can change while
WINDOWS SANDBOX LETS YOU INSTALL APPS INTO AN ISOLATED ENVIRONMENT
Windows is in use), and it’s loaded as a THAT LEAVES NO TRACE ONCE CLOSED.

snapshot rather than needing to boot

from scratch. You can use XML configuration files to disable network access, expose specific folders from your
main Windows system, or run a script. This means you could install Visual Studio Code and open a project or
create a sandbox with no network access and a read-only link to the Downloads folder to try out downloaded
files safely.

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 WINDOWS 10 MAY 2019 UPDATE: 10 NOTABLE NEW FEATURES

2. RESERVED STORAGE
Windows needs enough storage to update itself, and for day-to-day running. Until now, it hasn’t tried to carve
out enough space on the system drive to do that, so you could end up with so little disk space that you couldn’t,
say, run the Disk Cleanup tool to make more space. Reserved Storage allocates around 7GB of drive space to
Windows for updates, caches, and temporary files. (The exact amount depends on which languages and features
are installed.) Reserved Storage will be on automatically if you clean-install 1903 on a PC (or if that’s the
version of Windows it comes with); you can also turn it on by setting a registry key.

RESERVED STORAGE ALLOCATES AROUND 7GB OF DRIVE SPACE TO WINDOWS FOR UPDATES, CACHES AND
TEMPORARY FILES.

3. MORE, SEPARATE SEARCH

If you’ve been removing the Cortana button from the taskbar to save space, you may need to put it back.
Clicking into the Search box on the taskbar, or starting to type after opening the Start menu, now brings up
a separate Search pane that doesn’t include the Cortana experience. To open Cortana, you have to click the

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 WINDOWS 10 MAY 2019 UPDATE: 10 NOTABLE NEW FEATURES

Cortana button and speak queries

rather than typing them. This
makes the integration between
Cortana and Microsoft To-Do
much less useful, because you can’t
quickly search for reminders.

The Search pane takes up more

room onscreen, but it doesn’t do
anything particularly useful with
that space. The huge icon for a
file doesn’t give you a thumbnail
preview, for example, but there is a SEARCH AND CORTANA ARE NOW SEPARATED.

list of the different types of searches

you can run across the top. (These pivots used to appear once a search had run.) Annoyingly, there’s no way to
remove the new list of most frequently used apps from the Search pane, even if you find them distracting.

If you want to search all folders, instead of just documents, pictures, videos, and the desktop, open
Settings>Search>Searching Windows and set Find My Files to Enhanced. It takes a good many hours to create
the initial index (which happens only when the PC is plugged in) and can reduce battery life, so if there are
specific folders you want to include, it may be better to add them individually under Advanced Search Indexer
Settings.

4. AUTOMATIC FOCUS ASSIST

With the Action Center, you can get a lot of alerts and notifications. The Focus Assist option hides these when
you’re trying to concentrate, but it’s easy to forget to turn it back on (or even on in the first place). You can now
have Focus Assist turn on automatically when you’re using any application in full screen. By default, it will still
show alarms, but you can customise that at Settings>System>Focus Assist. If you don’t want to get an extra
notification in the Action Center every time one of these rules turns on Focus Assist, click through to the rule
and clear the check box to show it.

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 WINDOWS 10 MAY 2019 UPDATE: 10 NOTABLE NEW FEATURES

YOU CAN NOW HAVE FOCUS ASSIST TURN ON AUTOMATICALLY.

5. FASTER FONT INSTALL

You can right-click on a font file in File Explorer and choose Install, but that installs the font for all users and
means entering an admin credential. If you only want to use the font only for yourself, you can now drag the
file from Explorer into the Settings>Fonts page to install it.

6. PASSWORDLESS SIGN-IN
If you’re going to use Windows Hello to log in with your face or fingerprint, you have to set up a PIN, which
is more secure than a password because it’s stored only on that specific device. But you must still have had a
password on your Microsoft account in the first place to add it to Windows, which is one more password to
forget or lose. Now you can use a passwordless Microsoft account that’s tied to your mobile phone to set up a

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 WINDOWS 10 MAY 2019 UPDATE: 10 NOTABLE NEW FEATURES

Windows account using an SMS code. Originally, that was just for Windows 10 Home, but now it works with
all editions, so companies wanting to move to zero-trust passwordless systems can include Windows in that.

YOU CAN NOW USE A PASSWORDLESS MICROSOFT ACCOUNT THAT’S TIED TO YOUR MOBILE PHONE.

7. EMOJI SYMBOL PICKER

Using the Windows + semicolon shortcut to open the Emoji picker enables you to add smiley faces and
thumbs ups to your messages, which is fun. It also lets you find accented characters, fractions, and symbols, like
® or €, which is a big timesaver for more formal documents.

8. WSL IMPROVEMENTS
The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) has always come with a dire warning not to edit Linux files from
inside Windows applications because they’d get corrupted. You can now safely create and edit Linux files
in Windows, because there’s a 9P protocol server running inside WSL that supports Linux metadata and

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 WINDOWS 10 MAY 2019 UPDATE: 10 NOTABLE NEW FEATURES

permissions (as long as you don’t access the files through the AppData folder). Use \\wsl$\{distro name}\ to
open your Linux files at the command line or in Explorer.

YOU CAN NOW SAFELY CREATE AND EDIT LINUX FILES IN WINDOWS.

The WSL command line now lets you run commands as different users, terminate running distributions, and
import a new Linux distribution from a tar file instead of having to install it through the Store. One of the
big advantages of WSL is that you can use multiple Linux distros simultaneously on the same PC without the
overhead or complexity of multiple VMs. The ability to import and export distros like this makes it easier if
your organisation has a preferred Linux version for developers or admins to use.

9. CLOCK SYNC
If you turn on a PC you haven’t used in a while and the time is wrong by more than a few hours, you may have
problems getting connected or accessing email. That’s a security protection, but it also means your PC won’t be
able to get the right time from the time server because it can’t connect to it. Settings>Time & Language now

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 WINDOWS 10 MAY 2019 UPDATE: 10 NOTABLE NEW FEATURES

shows when the time was last synchronised, and you can click Sync Now to correct the time instead of having
to set it by hand—which means you get the security protection without the annoyance.

CLICK SYNC NOW TO CORRECT THE TIME, RATHER THAN SET IT BY HAND.

10. SMART TOUCH KEYBOARD

Tablet users will like the new touch
keyboard feature that predicts which
key you’re going to hit next and
invisibly adjusts the hit target for all
the keys to make the ones you’re most
likely to be trying to touch slightly
larger. (This is the same technique
used on Windows Phone; users may
THE HIT TARGET IS ADJUSTED BASED ON THE NEXT PREDICTED LETTER.
remember how much more accurate
this made typing onscreen.)

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