The Windows 10 October 2018 Update offers new ways to secure your PC from ransomware, Bluetooth battery gauges, and automatic Storage Sense cloud cleanup, to name a few handy improvements.
Microsoft’s Windows 10 October 2018 Update differs from past Windows updates in an important way: This time around, the day-to-day improvements will impact you in more profound ways than the new features. So while we’ve reviewed the new Windows OS, we’ve also separated these new conveniences into their own story.
What’s a feature? What’s a convenience? Think of it this way: Not all of you have used Windows 10’s Paint 3D app. But probably every one of you has managed files within Windows and the cloud, used Windows’ search function, and adjusted the size of a font or text. We’re calling these the “conveniences” of the Windows 10 Oct. 2018 Update. They may just make your life easier. (Note: Our story is based on the final Windows 10 Insider Builds, which led up to the official October 2018 Update. Microsoft doesn’t appear to have added anything with the announcement, but we’ll check and update this story to reflect any last-minute changes.)
Connecting a mouse to a PC via a USB charging cord isn’t the end of the world, but it’s always handy to know when a truly wireless device—such as the Surface Pen shown here in Microsoft’s example—is about to give up the ghost. (In part, that’s because the AAAA batteries it requires aren’t that easy to find.)
Not every Bluetooth device will be able to report its charge.
As it is, the “Make everything bigger” control isn’t universal—which will either be a forgivable offense or just annoying.
Windows wants something from you, however: Within the Virus & Threat Protection menu, you’ll need to go all the way down to Ransomware protection, click the Windows Defender Antivirus options caret, and then allow Windows Defender to periodically scan your PC. (This may be buggy; I sometimes had problems enabling controlled folders without enabling real-time scanning of my PC by Windows Defender, which also necessitated turning off a third-party antivirus program.)
The “adjust video based on lighting” setting makes it easier to view video outdoors, at the cost of some fidelity.
Granted, you’ll need a laptop with a backlight that’s powerful enough to make this feature viable, and a sensor that can detect different lighting levels.
Storage Sense can now clean out files you want stored only on OneDrive, and not on your PC.
Within the October 2018 Update, you’ll have the option to send unused files to your OneDrive cloud, where they won’t take up local space. It’s the equivalent of automatically moving old boxes of stuff from your garage to an offsite storage unit. (Microsoft uses an odd name for this: dehydration.) In this case, the file won’t disappear; it will simply “dehydrate” into one stored within the cloud, which you’ll need to re-download if you want to access it.
You can turn this on for files that you haven’t touched in a given period (60 days, say), or if your PC’s available storage dips below a certain threshold. You can tag files as “always available,” which means that they’ll always be stored locally on your PC even if they are left alone for a long time. Storage Sense was toggled on for my PC, and it’s set to send unused files to the cloud every 30 days if needed.
If you turn on Storage Sense and opt to “dehydrate” unused files, you many end up with many of them residing in the cloud only (as indicated by the column of cloud icons). If there’s a problem syncing a file, you’ll see the red ‘X’ icon next to OneDrive.
As Microsoft’s Aniket Naravanekar explained in a recent blog post about Storage Sense, the feature’s purpose is to help Windows to run smoothly. But does that mean that your unused multi-gigabyte games library will be sent off to the cloud, requiring you to re-download it? Let’s hope not.
While the size of the Start menu within the October 2018 Update remains unchanged, entering a search query within the Cortana search box now opens a genuinely massive search box that swallows much of your screen. The benefit here is Windows will essentially open a browser right within your search window, eliminating the need to open a separate browser tab to search. (Windows uses Bing as its search engine, by default.)
Microsoft’s putting more into its Search box—notice the expanded search options for apps, documents, and more. If you use Office 365, you’ll see more there with the new Microsoft Search, too.
You can see the larger search box within the April 2018 Update by entering a search query, then clicking the blue result “to see Web results”. In the October 2018 Update, the large-format results box opens automatically, which also includes tabs for apps, documents, email messages, and more. There’s one quirk: if you’re used to typing a query and then hitting Enter, Windows will still open a browser window, as before. Training yourself not to do that, in order to see the in-window search result, is tricky.
Microsoft’s actually touting this improvement as a server-side update, so you may see it regardless of how quickly your PC receives the October 2018 Update. As part of the new search function, you should see blue download buttons that Microsoft sometimes injects when you search for a downloadable app. It’s worth noting, too, that Google is trying a similar strategy: tucking search results inside its Chrome 69 omnibox.
Focus Assist is Microsoft’s name for a feature that limits or turns off notifications depending upon your preferences. In the October 2018 Update, it turns on automatically when you’re playing a full-screen game.
You won’t receive any notifications to disturb your gaming with the October 2018 Update of Windows 10.
The Windows 10 emoji keyboard can be launched by Win+; which makes sense when you think about it. With the October 2018 Update, Microsoft has incorporated the new Emoji 11 into the emoji keyboard, which includes characters like redheads, a lobster, and dynamite, as well as lesser-used languages such as Mtavruli and Hanifi Rohingya.
Members of the Windows Insider beta-testing group become obsessed with certain proposed features. One of these is a dark theme for File Explorer, which has finally arrived.
Is this dark theme dark enough for you?
If you typically project a PowerPoint presentation or OneNote notebook for a classroom, you probably mix and match text, video, and (occasionally) gaming.
A toolbar like this will appear once you try and connect wirelessly to a display.
A small convenience within Windows (and its Connect app) is that wireless projection connections will now have their dedicated toolbar, along with three modes: a low-latency game mode, a higher-latency video mode (to stream videos smoothly) and a “productivity” mode that’s somewhere in between. We didn’t have a chance to test this out, but it should help fine-tune wireless connections to sharpen the experience.
Microsoft originally promised that its SwiftKey keyboard would arrive with the Windows 10 October 2018 Update, but only part of it apparently landed. You can turn on SwiftKey text prediction to better predict auto-completed words, but the other half—the ability to swipe from letter to letter—doesn’t appear in the build.
