Windows 10 Redstone 2 Build 14946 Hits Fast Ring With Customizable Touchpad Gestures

Today, Microsoft released Windows 10 ‘Redstone 2’ Build 14946 to Windows Insiders on the Fast ring. Build 14946 is available to both PC users and those that using Windows 10 Mobile smartphones. Microsoft has made a number of improvements, the first of which will be greatly appreciated by PC users.

Microsoft is allowing users to customize the touchpad experience with Build 14946, allowing you to specify three- and four-finger gestures, and even assign a specific number of taps to bring up Windows 10 features like Cortana, Action Center, and switching between apps.

“The Advanced Gestures Configuration page has more configuration options, including hooking gestures up for next/previous song, creating/deleting virtual desktops, or snapping windows,” writes Dona Sarkar, who serves as a Software Engineer for the Windows and Devices Group. “In addition to these new options, we’ve also updated the Touchpad settings to include reference diagrams to remind you of what to expect when you swipe with three or four fingers in a particular direction.”

For those using a smartphone, Microsoft has incorporated a new screen time-out setting that will allow you to “be able to turn off whichever screen you are not using with Continuum – saving battery and preventing screen burn-in.” In other words, you can be working on an Excel or PowerPoint document using Continuum, and your smartphone’s display will go to sleep. This seems like such a common sense feature that should have been enabled from the start.

Microsoft Dona Sarkar (holding the microphone)

Other new features include updated Wi-Fi settings for both PC and mobile, the ability to remove a word from your custom dictionary on mobile and the ability to “prevent autocorrection” on mobile if the suggested word is not what you’d like to use.

Microsoft has also provided a full list of additional updates and fixes that have been made to both PCs and mobile devices running Windows 10 Build 14946:

Changes on PC

• Optional components such as Hyper-V and Bash should remain installed after updating to this build.
• We have fixed the issue where signing into games that use Xbox Live would not work. You should be able to sign-in to Xbox Live in games in this build.
• We fixed the issue causing Microsoft Edge to sometimes crash on launch, or when you type in address bar or try to open a new tab. You no longer need to run the PowerShell script.
• We fixed the issue causing touch scrolling to be too sensitive in Windows 10 apps, such as Microsoft Edge.
• We fixed an issue where Explorer.exe would hang when attempting to open considerably large .MOV files.
• We fixed an issue that could result in the network icon occasionally getting into a state where a red X would display in the taskbar despite an active internet connection, until the device had been restarted.
• We fixed an issue where if the device’s brightness was automatically adjusted after being woken from sleep, the brightness level shown in the Action Center’s Brightness Quick Action might not reflect the current brightness of the device.
• We fixed an issue leading to Narrator not tracking focus on the Start Menu All apps list or tiles.
• We fixed an issue potentially resulting in the “Open with…” dialog displaying with two entries for Calculator after tapping the Calculator key on a keyboard or running the Calculator app.

Changes on Mobile

• We fixed the issue causing you to get into a state where text messages will fail to send.
• When your phone is connected to your PC, long lists of captured photos will now load significantly faster in File Explorer.
• We’ve updated Narrator’s reading order for Windows 10 apps which display an app bar on the bottom of the app, for example OneDrive, so now the contents of the page will be read before the contents of the app bar
• We fixed an issue resulting in video thumbnails sometimes not being shown in WhatsApp – videos received from this build onwards will display a thumbnail.
• We fixed an issue resulting in Camera app video recordings having a slight crackle to their audio in recent builds.