Windows 10 Preview Build 17728 Includes a New Your Phone App – Info Tips and Tricks

Microsoft today rolled out Windows 10 Redstone 5 preview build 17728 to Insiders in the Fast ring. In addition to general fixes and improvements, today’s build also includes an interesting new feature called Your Phone app. It will allow you to easily transfer files, photos, and other data on your Android phone to your Windows 10 PC. Here is a look at what’s new and what you can expect.

Windows 10 Redstone 5 Preview Build 17728

The big news here is the Your Phone app. It was actually unveiled earlier this year at the Build developers conference in May and is now live in today’s Insider build. It’s meant to allow you to mirror content from your phone to a PC. Currently, it works with Android, so those users will be the first to test the new feature. You will be able to drag and drop photos directly from the phone into Office apps and other supported Windows apps. Microsoft is also going to add support for text message and notification sync. You will need to be running Android 7.0 or higher and install an Android app from Microsoft to get things started.

Microsoft says the Your Phone app will have limited functionality with iPhones, too. “For iPhone users, Your Phone app helps you to link your phone to your PC. Surf the web on your phone, then send the webpage instantly to your computer to pick up where you left off to continue what you’re doing–read, watch, or browse with all the benefits of a bigger screen,” notes Microsoft’s Dona Sarkar and Brandon LeBlanc.

In addition to the new features above, here is a look at other things that have been improved in today’s build:

• We fixed an issue resulting minimized apps having squished thumbnails in Task View.
• We fixed an issue where when open Task View would crash if you pressed Alt+F4 and Timeline was enabled.
• We fixed an issue where Timeline’s scrollbar didn’t work with touch.
• We fixed an issue where the top border of UWP apps would still be accent colored even if having an accent colored border was disabled in Settings.
• We fixed an issue resulting in the tops of apps in tablet mode being clipped (i.e. missing pixels).
• We fixed an issue where the taskbar would stay on top of full-screened apps if you had previously hovered over any grouped taskbar icon to bring up the extended list of previews, but then clicked elsewhere to dismiss it.
• As some keen eye’d Insiders noticed, we’ve been working on our scaling logic and you should find apps resize better now after monitor DPI changes. As always, we appreciate feedback in this space, so let us know if you have any issues.
• We fixed an issue where Find on Page in Microsoft Edge would stop working for open PDFs once the PDF had been refreshed.
• We fixed an issue where Ctrl-based keyboard shortcuts (like Ctrl+C, Ctrl+A) didn’t work in editable fields for PDFs opened in Microsoft Edge.
• We fixed an issue where the icons in the Microsoft Edge extension pane were drawing unexpectedly close to the toggles.
• We fixed an issue where the enabled/disabled state of Fast Startup would be reset to default after upgrading. After upgrading off of this build your preferred state will persist.
• We fixed an issue where the Windows Security icon in the taskbar notification area (systray) would become a little bit blurrier every time there was a resolution change.
• We fixed an issue where the USERNAME environment variable was returning SYSTEM when queried from an un-elevated Command Prompt in recent builds.
• We fixed the issue where if the Narrator key is set to just Insert, sending a Narrator command from a braille display should now function as designed regardless if the Caps Lock key is a part of the Narrator key mapping.
• We fixed the issue in Narrator’s automatic dialog reading where the title of the dialog is being spoken more than once.
• We fixed the issue where Narrator won’t read combo boxes until Alt + down arrow is pressed.

As is the case with all preview builds, there are also several known issues with this latest build. Make sure to read Microsoft’s full post on all changes, known issues, workarounds, and developer notes. And let us know how the Your Phone app is working for you. And for more Microsoft discussion and troubleshooting advice, head to our Windows 10 Forums.