Windows 10 Anniversary Update: The Road To Redstone
by Brett Howse on August 2, 2016 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Operating Systems
- Microsoft
- Windows 10
New Features And Built-In App Updates
Dark Mode
The Anniversary Update also adds another feature to personalize the experience: Dark Mode. As the name suggests, Dark Mode changes the default color scheme to black. The built-in apps also set their color scheme based on this setting, including mail, the store, and more.
This is certainly a nice feature for personalization, but it’s also a smart idea with recent launches of PCs and tablets with OLED displays. Lenovo showed off their own theme for Windows 10 at CES, for use with their OLED laptops, which eliminates a lot of the bright white display aspects that desktops and laptops have become accustomed to.
Other apps, such as Edge, also include a dark mode but the toggle is in the app settings, so you can customize this the way you prefer.
Mail App
The built-in Mail app hasn’t changed much visually since it was launched, but it’s continued to gain features which were very much missing when the OS first shipped. For instance, the mail client originally shipped with Conversation View as the only way to see your mail. About a month after Windows 10 shipped, an update arrived which allowed you to set the view to the more traditional view of chronological order.
With the Anniversary Update, Microsoft has finally fixed another missing feature which was a huge inconvenience for many people (myself included) which is you can finally send mail as another address. The Windows 8.1 mail client supports this, Microsoft’s Outlook.com supports this, but until this update, the Windows 10 mail client was missing this. You could of course put multiple accounts into it, but if you’ve consolidated to one, you can now use a drop-down selection on the send address to pick any addresses configured.
OneDrive
The OneDrive experience changed dramatically with Windows 10. Windows 8.1 featured the ability to see all of your files in OneDrive, and only download those that you wanted to access. Windows 10 ditched that and went with a per-folder sync when OneDrive was configured. With the limited storage on many devices, this wasn’t always ideal. To compound matters, there was no app for OneDrive when the OS launched.
At least one of these issues is now gone, and while not tied to the Anniversary Update, there is now an app to access OneDrive. It does give access, and you can download files that you need, although it’s a traditional file-save dialog rather than just download it and keep the file in sync within the OneDrive folder like in Windows 8.1.
There were reports of placeholders coming back to Windows 10, but at least so far, there hasn’t been any official word of this feature coming back. Until a new solution is found, OneDrive is not be the integrated experience it was in Windows 8.1.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
194 Comments
View All Comments
Agent Smith - Wednesday, August 3, 2016 - link
WoW!Edge is very fast.
Orionsangel - Wednesday, August 3, 2016 - link
I've tried twice already and the install failed. I get the black screen with the circle loading for hours and hours. I'm forced to restore to windows previous version. I've used windows troubleshooter and it detected a problem and it said it fixed it. I'm afraid to try again though. It's gonna try to update on its own though at some point. MS sucks! Fix your Windows 10 updates!azrael- - Wednesday, August 3, 2016 - link
"The Windows 10 Anniversary Update brings a lot of welcome changes to Windows 10..."How about all the unwelcome changes? Forced Cortana, forced lock screen, group policies that no longer work etc.
But hey, we wouldn't want any negativity here. No raining on Microsoft's parade.
xunknownx - Wednesday, August 3, 2016 - link
this is a pretty mehhh.... update. call me old school, i'm a desktop user.i don't use cortana, i don't use edge, i dont own an xbox, i dont use any "apps" from the app store, i dont use the action center.
so this update is meaningless to me.
brucek2 - Wednesday, August 3, 2016 - link
Exactly. And much of the "new" being touted here that is of interest to me, is functionality I've long had from other sources -- Chrome has had extensions forever, I have both extensive Cygwin and linux VM setups, Steam installs games where I want them, etc etc.On there no longer being a local search (cortana force enabled) - were they at least smart enough to have local results returned instantly vs waiting for net response? It's going to be infuriating if everything is laggy every time my ISP is, or there's a DDOS attack in progress, etc.
Socius - Wednesday, August 3, 2016 - link
Also important to note...Windows Store Apps can now be easily installed on the hard drive of your choosing! I realized this when during the upgrade, it told me my copy of Gears of Wars needed to be repaired (which means...downloaded/installed again. fortunately I have a 250mbps connection so the 52GB download wasn't that problematic). To my surprise, when I clicked install, it listed my hard drives and asked which one I wanted to install to. This is a very welcome change.rsouzadk - Wednesday, August 3, 2016 - link
For you guys that updated, Edges now supports full screen mode?dgingeri - Wednesday, August 3, 2016 - link
I've found two problems with this new build, 1 major and 1 medium:1. Major - It enables Windows Defender even if you have an antivirus program already running, causing major file contention. With Eset products, even an uninstall and reinstall does not disable Windows Defender, so I am forced to use Microsoft's crappy protection. I have not found if any other antivirus programs work.
2. Perfect World Entertainment programs, from the Arc client to any of the games on it, refuse to work at all. The repair, installer, or uninstaller also refuse to work. I can't remove it, and I can't fix it. I also can't even run my favorite game, Star Trek Online. Really annoying. Blizzard products seem to work fine, though.
HollyDOL - Wednesday, August 3, 2016 - link
ad 1. - using Avira myself and this did not happen to me... there is a chance M$ is not to blame on that one.ADFGVX - Wednesday, August 3, 2016 - link
Windows Defender is now considered as a backup protection if there exists 3rd party AV by Microsoft , so it is not disabled automatically. You can disable it through group policy though.