Last updated to match version 10.0.21354, see 21H1 for more changes

Start + taskbar

• Folders in the app list in the Start menu will now be flattened when only 1 item is located in the folder.
• News and interests has been added to the right on the taskbar, including a news feed, weather widget and more, showing the weather on the taskbar.
• Right-clicking locally available files in jumplists will now show an option to "Open File Location".
• Virtual Desktop is receiving new features.
  • Virtual desktops can now be reorded by draging them across the virtual desktop bar.
  • A virtual desktop can now have its own individual background.
• Toggles for showing the Windopws Ink Workspace button, touch keyboard button, Task View button and Search have been removed from the taskbar context menu.
• Windows Tools has been added to the All Apps list and replaces the Windows Accessories, Windows Administrative Tools, Windows PowerShell, and Windows System folder.
• File Explorer has been been moved out of the "Windows System" folder into the root apps list.
• Notepad, Paint, and Snipping Tool have been moved out of the "Windows Accessories" folder into the root apps list.

User Interface

• Replaces the MDL2 icon set with Segoe Fluent Icons.
• Updates the window opening and closing animations.
• Aero Shake has been removed, shaking a window will no longer hide all other windows.
• The desktop icon set has been revamped with new Fluent style icons.

File Explorer

• The 3D Objects userfolder has been removed as a default library.
• The File Explorer layout has been updated to be more in line with modern XAML experiences.
• The "View"-ribbon has a new option to enable compact mode, restoring the previous spacing.

Microsoft Edge

• Removes Microsoft Edge Legacy and replaces it with Microsoft Edge.

System

• Support for x64 emulation on ARM devices.
• Compatibility settings for x64 applications have been added.

Settings

System

• The "Multitasking" page has been renamed to "Multi-tasking"
• Storage Space settings have been added under "Storage"
• Sounds now displays a message when microphone permissions have been turned off for the whole system or all apps
• Content Adaptive Brightness Control can now be disabled under "Display"

Devices

• Toggling the touchpad no longer required admin privileges
• The notification to pair Bluetooth tdevices will now remain on screen longer
• The "Cameras"-page has been added and allows to maange webcams and other network-connected cameras.

Personalization

• Right-clicking on a background will now provide you with options to set it for a specific virtual desktop
• Changing a wallpaper when using virtual desktops will only change the background of the current active desktop
• Toggles for showing the Windopws Ink Workspace button, touch keyboard button, Task View button and Search have been added under "Taskbar"
• The "Device usage"-page has been added allowing you to customize suggestions for tips, tools, and services

Apps

• Under "Apps & features" > "Optional features" you can now install and uninstall the Snipping Tool
• Updates a number of strings under "Offline maps"
• Windows will now prefer to open text files in either Notepad or Word by default, instead of WordPad

Time & Language

• When the timezone in your locations changes, Windows will now show a notification indicating that the timezone is being changed, if the OS isn't certain about this change, it will provide options within the notifications to not change the timezone

Ease of Access

• "Closed captions" has been renamed "Captions"
• The captions preview is now an enlargable video
• You can now create multiple caption styles and switch between them with a dropdown

Privacy

• Adds the "Screensot borders" permission page.
• Adds the "Screenshots and apps" permission page.

Update & Security

• The toggle for "Automatically adjust active hours for this device based on activity" is now enabled by default and will enable if you've never interacted with it.

Apps

3D Viewer

• 3D Viewer has been removed as a default app.

Control Panel

• The "Administrative Tools" have been renamed "Windows Tools".

Notepad

• Notepad is now updated through the Microsoft Store
• Notepad now has an updated icon

Paint

• Paint is now updated through the Microsoft Store
• Paint now has an updated icon

Paint 3D

• Paint 3D has been removed as a default app

Power Automate Desktop

• Power Automate Desktop has been added as a default app

PowerShell

• PowerShell will now run as x64 on ARM64 instead of x86

Register

• Adds support for using Ctrl + Backspace to delete an entire word in the Find window, when renaming a key and other places

Snip & Sketch + Snipping Tool

• Snipping Tool can now be uninstalled through Optional Features
• Snipping Tool is now updated through the Microsoft Store
• Snipping Tool has been added to Snip & Sketch, installing one will install the other

Task Manager

• Updates the scaling of graphs in the Task Manager's Performance-tab

Windows Terminal

• Windows Terminal has been added as a default app.

Accessibility

• Narrator will now announce that notifications have been cleared when deleting a group of notifications when using the Delete key or Dismiss button
• Narrator has an updated icon

• Magnifier has improved, smoother motion when transitioning between mouse and keyboard

  Gaming

  • Auto HDR Preview has been added to automatically apply HDR visuals to over 1000 DirextX 11 and 12 games

Language and input

• The Math Input Panel has been removed
• The dictation UI has been updated to appear floating at the bottom of the screen instead of beng locked to the top bar
• Improved spellchecking and text prediction relevance
• Undocking the keyboard will now automatically switch it to the small keyboard layout
• The symbols view has been updated for the small and split keyboard layouts
• The keyboard layouts are now a nested menu under settings rather than a top-level one
• Updates the password feedback icon to an eye-icon instead of a blinking-key icon
• When the keyboard is shown on screens larger than 12", the Esc, Tab and Windows key will be shown as well
• The candidate bar will now only show up to 5 results and center them for easier access
• The N’Ko keyboard layout now provides quick access to curreny and other symbols by holding Shift and using the top row

Emoji picker & Clipboard

• You can now pin items in the clipboard history
• An option to "Paste as plain text" has been added to the clipboard history
• Support for searching in Amharic, Belarus, Cherokee, Filipino, Faroese, Icelandic, Khmer, Mongolian (Cyrillic script), Burmese, Sindhi, Serbian (Cyrillic script), Serbian (Latin script), Swahili, Thai, Turkmen, Tonga, Uzbek (Latin script), and Cantonese (Traditional) has been added

Input Method Editor

• Revampes the IME design to be more in line with Fluent Design
• The IME now provides quick access to the emoji picker

Other features

• Windows Sandbox and Microsoft Defender Application Guard now use a new runtime that optimizes for container scenarios.
• Windows Sandbox has been updated to include the new Microsoft Edge.

Windows Subsystem for Linux

• The default path to access Linux files from Windows has been changed from \\wsl\\ to \\wsl.localhost\\

And further

• Support for Emoji 12.1 and 13.0, as well as updates to pre-existing emojis
• Replaces the display version with "Dev" rather than the YYHH-version, and removes the copyright year from the Windows version dialog