The Windows 10 Fall Creators Update Feature Focus
by Brett Howse on November 10, 2017 8:00 AM ESTOneDrive Files on Demand
I’ll admit, I’m a heavy user of OneDrive. It was a tough pill to swallow when Windows 10 launched and removed the support for OneDrive placeholders that arrived with Windows 8.1. Placeholders allowed you to see your entire OneDrive collection, even if it wasn’t downloaded to your PC, and then if you needed a file, you could double click it to download and open. It’s a simple concept, but the original implementation had some issues. Some of the issues were end-user related, such as people not understanding a file they had access to at home might not be available to them on an airplane, and some of them were app issues with the extended delays that might occur when waiting to download a file.
With the new Files on Demand, hopefully that is all fixed. First off, there’s a new setting in the OneDrive app in the system tray that enables and disables this functionality.
If you really prefer to just have everything downloaded, you can keep the original Windows 10 method where only folders you explicitly say to sync are downloaded. If you want Files on Demand, you have to check the box.
Once checked, files in OneDrive will gain a new status icon to display if they are online or downloaded. As I quickly found out though, it’s a bit confusing, in that OneDrive will still only display folders that you have told it to display in the Select Folders settings. So even if you have 10,000 files in your music folder, you won’t see them unless you first ensure that folder is synced. The difference is now it won’t download the file until you access it.
If you open a file, Windows 10 will automatically download it for you, and then open it. Depending on the size of the file, and your network speed, this could cause some delay, but the space savings will be significant, especially if you have a smaller SSD.
Microsoft has created a settings page for Automatic File Downloads, where you can unblock apps from automatically downloading files. For reasons that don’t seem to make any sense, this setting is under the Privacy section of Settings, and it doesn’t appear to be fleshed out yet, since you can’t block apps here, only unblock them. The wording does make it seem like Microsoft is going to open this up to other online file providers as well, which should be good news for many.
Also, in what is almost certainly a bid to improve performance, if you open a photo, for instance, and it has to be downloaded first, Windows 10 will also automatically download the photo before and after, so that if you move to the next file, it’s already available. This is a good idea for performance, but you may end up downloading lots of files you didn’t need.
Overall, first impressions of Files on Demand is positive. It can be a bit confusing to set up, since unlike Windows 8.1, you have to still tell it which folders you want to see, but the performance is solid, and it is very easy to distinguish between files that are already downloaded and those that are not. You still get a thumbnail for images that aren’t downloaded as well.
Storage Sense
In addition to freeing up space by being able to access your OneDrive files only when you need them, Microsoft has improved Storage Sense in an effort to automatically help clean up files you likely no longer require.
One of the most useful ones, at least for me, will be to delete files in Downloads that haven’t changed in 30 days. That folder tends to accumulate a lot of cruft that doesn’t need to be kept.
In addition, it can automatically empty your recycle bin, temp files, and previous versions of Windows, which are kept for a period of time in case you need to or want to roll back to the last version.
Storage Sense is a small idea, but should be very helpful. It even keeps track of how much space it’s cleaned up for you.
One obvious improvement here would be to integrate this with OneDrive as well, to give the option to clean up space from OneDrive files you haven’t accessed in a while now that Files on Demand can fetch them back quickly. Hopefully this comes in a future update.
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Lunaria - Saturday, November 11, 2017 - link
This was the update that made me go back pre-creators update. I am done with them for now. It must be the first time they messed up DX so much, all because of some placebo game mode, some useless game bar and what the hell is that new feature that they added about cheaters gonna do? I sent them feedback about it, and pointed out how clunky it is, how much frame drops I am getting after it and how "disable fullscreen optimizations" or adding game mode toggle in the settings panel and then hiding that same toggle from us in this update is just terrific. They already messed up plenty of things. Sure your games alt tab faster in fullscreen exclusive mode... who cares if they don't run properly? I am on version 1151 build whatever, some February 2016 one. Immediately changed the update server IP so I do not get updates. Leave me alone. If they want to market gaming as a thing, they should go back to their origins and take their stable DX core, reduce latency even further, implement low profile recording with minimal impact and most importantly ask users if they want to use those features or even worse if it goes bad again, those "features". They improved it, yes, but it doesn't even come close to the smooth heaven that gaming before it was added was. Not to mention the creators tools that most people do not need. The Settings menu is getting populated slowly with useful and not so useful information, but it is nothing impressive and I doubt it will ever be. Microsoft if you get only 10 people to test your features, you will recieve better and more valuable feedback than pushing those things to users who will find a way to disable and not use them because you forced them to do so. Give us back what we love and don't Telemetry on us or force us to use Windows Defender, thank you.bill44 - Saturday, November 11, 2017 - link
Whatever happened to Windows 10 Color Management?WFCU supposed to bring in stage 2 improvements to color management, but looks like it's been left out.
Wide COlor Gamut support is useless without it.
Lunaria - Saturday, November 11, 2017 - link
Not to mention they reset my gamma settings all the time.Icehawk - Saturday, November 11, 2017 - link
Let me know when they figure out how to make W10 not bork a good % of my machines when upgrading, super annoying having to rollback and have wasted an hour.Lolimaster - Sunday, November 12, 2017 - link
Stick to win7 and maybe get a xbox one for those games that are win10 exclusives?Lolimaster - Sunday, November 12, 2017 - link
Nothing else justifies having win10 for productivity.marvdmartian - Monday, November 13, 2017 - link
No doubt! At least flash something up on the screen, letting me know that you're pushing an update, and installing it. That way, I'm not suddenly dealing with a crippled machine, that is spending so much of its resources installing a bunch of (mostly useless) "new & improved" apps, and wondering why it's not doing what I want it to do?At least you got a notification of updates, with previous versions of Windows. W10, you're not sure, until you finally get so frustrated, that you reboot....and only THEN get the "Please wait, installing updates" message.
My 2nd favorite part of W10, is the apps that they don't want you to uninstall....even if there's no chance in hell, that you will EVER use them! Because, who doesn't want a bunch of crapware, clogging up your OS, right??
Apple Worshipper - Sunday, November 12, 2017 - link
Windows sucked and will continue to do so. iOS is the undisputed future while iPads will be the one and only true form of mobile computing going. All others are not even worth speaking aboutMarburg U - Sunday, November 12, 2017 - link
And, as ALL the previous updates. This gives out the "interactive windows station" error, on half my computers. Another great job. Probably it will take me 4 days to reformat everything (AGAIN).Glock24 - Sunday, November 12, 2017 - link
Another change I noticed is that that air now using more of the "modern app" control panels. For example, when you right click the network icon and select "network and sharing center" you her one of those new control panels, which I personally dislike. The one good thing though is that it's now possible to set any network as "public" or "private" in the new network control panelAnother change I noticed is on the task manager. It now shows GPU usage and also shows multiple GPUs where it applies.
I've not seen any of the new "Fluent Design". Is that only for " modern apps"? If so I'll never see it, as I uninstall all of those as I find them very annoying.