Windows 10 20H1 Insider Preview 18885 Lands With Android Notifications, Improved Dictation

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that it would soon be merging the Fast and Skip Ahead rings together so that they would both receive future Windows 10 20H1 (First Half 2020) builds. One of the latest fruits of these new combined rings is Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18875.

One of the major features that is being touted in this release is the ability to see Android app notifications from within Windows 10. As long as you have the Your Phone app installed on your Android phone (and synced with your Microsoft account), you'll be able to see your incoming phone notifications via a pop-up in Windows 10 in real-time. Not only can you customize which app notifications you receive on within Windows 10, but you can also clear all notifications at once with a simple click. And most importantly, if a notification is dismissed on once device, that action is mirrored on the other.

Microsoft sees this feature as a boost to productivity since you won't have to constantly pull your smartphone out of your pocket to interact with notifications. With this new feature, you get a quick look at what's important, and can easily determine what requires direct interaction with your phone.

The notifications feature is currently in preview, and is accessible on devices running Android 7.0 or newer, and with Windows 10 Build 1803 or later.

Microsoft also announced that the phone screen feature in the Your Phone app has been expanded to support additional devices. For those that need a refresher, this feature allows you to mirror (and interact with) your Android phone directly from within Windows 10. With this latest update, support has been added for the entire Samsung Galaxy S10 family, the Galaxy Note 8, Galaxy Note 9, OnePlus 6 and OnePlus 6T.

On a lesser note, Microsoft has added dictation support for additional languages (including French, Spanish, and German) and a new version of the Feedback Hub has been released.

Finally, here's a list of fixes/improvements included in this build:

• We fixed an issue that could result in USBs and SD cards being unexpectedly assigned a different drive letter after upgrading.
• We fixed an issue that could result in the post install setup message unexpectedly appearing while you were actively using your PC sometime after login.
• We’ve improved the layout of the App Volume and Device Preferences page in Sound settings and tweaked the page view for better usability.
• We’ve updated the text of the Storage Sense group policies to make them a bit more clear.
• We fixed an issue that could result in the “Make Windows better” page appearing after login showing “please wait”, with a progress wheel, for a long period of time. We also fixed an issue that could result in this page unexpectedly appearing while you were interacting with the device sometime after login.
• We fixed an issue that could sometimes result in Windows Hello looking for the user and immediately signing them back in right after locking the PC, rather than first prompting with “Welcome back, dismiss the lock screen to sign back in”.
• We fixed an issue that could result in some Insiders seeing only a flat blue screen when connecting to a recent build over remote desktop.

If you're on the Fast or Skip Ahead rings, you can download the Windows 10 Insider Preview 18885 from Windows Update.