Hey what's up guys, I'm ThioJoe.
If you haven't heard, today there is a major Windows 10 update going out called the "Creators
Update", and it's got a lot of new features.
So I thought it would be neat to go over what I think are the 10 best new features, even
those that are pretty minor that you might not hear about.
So let's get started.
The first change should make a lot of people happy, which is Microsoft changed the way
automatic updates go out.
I think we've all experienced a situation where the Automatic Windows Update tries to
restart your computer at literally the worst time possible.
Well now, Windows 10 Home users can set up to an 18 hour "active" time-frame where Windows
will not update.
It used to be 12, but now you get an extra six hours.
Also, those of you with Windows 10 Pro, Education, or Enterprise editions get the extra option
of deferring updates for up to 35 days.
Really useful if for example you're working on a project, and you're worried an update
will cause issues with your software or something, now you can just stop it from updating for
a while.
However, it seems like there's still no way to stop updates altogether.
But there's no reason why you would want to do that anyway.
Next up is a cool little new feature for the start menu.
You can now create start menu folders, to group multiple app tiles together instead
of having them all separate.
When you click on a group, it expands into a dropdown showing all the apps in the group.
I personally like the feature, since it lets me add some more programs into the start menu
that I might not have added before because they would have cluttered things up.
But the way it works is kinda weird, like if you put the group too close to the bottom
and expand it, the drop down gets cut off and you have to scroll, which I think is annoying.
I wish it would just create a pop up window or something, but whatever.
Better than not having the feature at all.
The third feature is honestly my favorite, and that is the new "Night Light" mode.
To find it, you go to Settings, System, then the display tab.
You'll see the toggle right near the top, or click the link to see more settings.
What it basically lets you do is change the color temperature of the screen at night to
be more orange.
This has the benefit of making it so your computer screen won't keep you up and disrupt
your sleep schedule.
Because we know that blue wavelengths of light, including those coming off your monitor, tell
your brain that it's daytime, so it makes it harder to fall asleep.
I personally have it set to the strongest setting, and you can set it to turn on and
off at a certain time, or automatically at sunrise and sunset.
Also, another cool thing is that if you already use the program Flux, which has been around
for a while and basically does the same thing, these two features will actually stack.
So what I do is have flux dim the screen at Sunset, and then Nightlight dim the screen
even more closer to when I go to bed.
So you might want to try that as well.
Number four, the new "storage sense" feature, which makes it easier to keep your hard drive
space freed up.
You'll find this in Settings, System, Storage.
This feature does two things.
First, it will clear out temporarily files that it detects your apps aren't using.
Second, it will automatically delete files out of your recycle bin that are over 30 days
old.
So if you tend to find yourself always running out of space, this might be a good first step,
since it deletes things you don't need anymore first.
Of course if it doesn't seem to help, you could always find out where all your storage
went with a program like "WinDirStat" that I've mentioned in other videos.
Number five is really a collection of Gaming features.
If you go to the settings Window, you will now see a new tile with an Xbox logo for Gaming.
A lot of these features already existed before the update, but they're now more accessible.
If you don't plan on using the features like recording or streaming, I'd recommend disabling
them, especially the Game DVR Background recording, since it could affect performance.
The most notable new feature here though is called "Game Mode".
This new mode will detect when you're playing a game, and then try to improve it's performance
by allocating system resources to prioritize that process.
It's not magic, and if you already have a really high end computer it probably won't
do much.
But if you have an older computer, or have issues with lots of background processes,
it might actually help.
So it's probably worth leaving on.
Number Six, the new Paint 3D program.
I still haven't really decided whether this is a gimmick or not.
It's kind of like a 3D version of MS Paint, in that it is meant to be very simple and
easy, and allows you to create three dimensional scenes.
It has some premade shapes and objects, lets you move and resize them, and draw on them
too.
So this might be cool for someone who just wants to mess around and have some fun, but
I'm not sure it has any practical application.
Though one thing I do like is that they have a section called "Remix 3D" where you can
download premade objects from other people to use, or even upload your own.
This I think is more useful than just trying to create your own stuff from scratch.
Next, number seven, the Mixed Reality Portal.
This isn't exactly anything useful yet, but will be pretty soon.
If you haven't heard, Microsoft is working with developers to create virtual reality
headsets they're calling "Mixed Reality", so you can basically create a virtual 3D environment
for windows.
You'd put on your headset, and instead of looking at a monitor, the desktop and stuff
would be in a 3D room.
Anyway, the Mixed Reality Portal now allows you to do that, even though there aren't any
publicly available yet.
To run the portal, you first have to enable developer mode by going to settings, Update
and Security, for developers, Developer mode.
Then you run the mixed reality portal, and since we don't have a physical headset, you
can choose the emulator.
When you run it, you can click and drag to move around the viewpoint, and get an idea
of what this 3D environment might look like if you were using a headset.
To activate something, you can press the space bar.
So again not useful at all right now, but still cool to check out.
Alright number eight, improved privacy options.
Or at least, Microsoft has made privacy options in Windows more up front and easier to understand.
When you finish installing the Creators Update, you're met with a window that right away asks
you what privacy settings you want to enable or disable.
This is much better than what they had before, where the privacy settings were kind of hidden
away, and most people probably clicked right by.
Unfortunately there is still no way to completely disable sending data to Microsoft.
They claim that "basic" mode, as opposed to Full or Enhanced, only collects necessary
data required by windows.
However, you can actually disable it altogether with some registry tweaks, but I'm not going
to get into that today, you can look that up yourself.
Coming near the end, number nine, Troubleshooters.
There's an entire new menu for figuring out issues with your computer.
To get to it, you go to Settings, Update & Security, then Troubleshoot.
Here you'll see all sorts of options for common issues that people have, and it will try to
do it's best to fix it, or at least make suggestions.
For example, if your printer isn't working, you can click the printer option, select the
printer, and it will do something to see if it can figure out the problem.
You've probably seen these troubleshooters before, but they typically only ever showed
up sometimes.
There hasn't really been a way to go through a list of all the different troubleshooters,
but now you can.
They don't always work, but they're a decent first step.
And finally, there's a new feature called Dynamic Lock.
This is very similar to features you see on phones these days, where the computer will
automatically lock your computer if you move too far away from it, based on having your
phone connected via bluetooth.
And right now it seems like it's designed to only work with phones, but it's possible
you could get it to work with something else if you try hard enough.
This is a pretty similar to the "smart lock" features you have seen in some android phones.
Where you pair a certain device to your phone, and while your phone is close to it, it doesn't
require a password, and if it's far away, it does.
Also, it doesn't seem like it will automatically unlock the computer if you come back within
range, it only locks it.
So I think this might be a neat feature in case you forget to lock your computer often,
but I wouldn't necessarily rely on it.
So I guess that's about it, let me know what you guys think and also if there are any features
that I didn't mention that you thought are awesome.
Like I said, there are plenty of other changes in the update that I didn't go over.
If you guys want to keep watching, I'll put some other videos right here, you can just
click on those.
And if you want to subscribe, I make new videos every tuesday thursday saturday, should be
worth it.
So thanks again for watching, I'll see you next time, have a good one.