Whats New in Windows 10s 20H2 Update, Arriving Fall 2020 – How-To Geek

Windows 10s 20H2 update will debut in the second half of 2020likely in October or November. This update is focused on bug and performance fixes, but it has some larger changeslike the removal of the System Control Panel.

This article is up-to-date with the latest changes as of Windows 10 Insider build 19042.450, which was released on August 11, 2020.

Windows 10s 20H2 update does offer some notable changesthe classic System pane in the Control Panel is vanishingbut mostly features smaller changes. Thats very exciting.

Sure, we had a smaller update last year with 19H2 (the November 2019 Update) followed by a larger update with 20H1 (the May 2020 Update). But Microsoft insisted that there was no plan to do a small update followed by a large update each year. This time around, 20H2 easily could have been another big release packed full of features. Instead, Microsoft is taking the existing 20H1 update and polishing it even further.

This update should be plenty stable because of all that effort going into polishing and bug-fixing. Thats good news for Windows 10 users.

Thats our Microsoft-to-English translation of whats going on, anyway. Heres how Microsoft phrases it: Windows 10 version 20H2 will offer a scoped set of features to improve performance and enhance quality.

This update will be fast to install, just like 19H2 was. If youre already running the May 2020 Update (20H1), installing it will be as fast as installing a normal monthly updateno long download or lengthy reboot required.

In this version of Windows, the classic System page in the Control Panel has been removed. When you try to open it, youll be taken to the About page in the new Settings app.

This isnt as big a deal as it sounds. All the information found in the Settings pane in Control Panel is available in the Settings app. Theres a convenient Copy button to copy all the text to your clipboard, and youll even find buttons for opening advanced system settings like BitLocker settings and Device Manager at the bottom of the page.

This is just another step in Microsofts long, slow process of slowly phasing out the Control Panel. The Control Panel wont vanish any time soon, thoughit has too many useful options and Microsoft is migrating them to the new Settings app very slowly.

RELATED: Don't Worry: Windows 10's Control Panel Is Safe (For Now)

Microsoft is proud that this is the first version of Windows 10 with the new, Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser included.

Thats not necessarily big newsWindows Update may already have installed the new Microsoft Edge on your system, anyway. The new Edge has also been available to download from the web since January 15, 2020. But, with this release, its official: The new Edge replaces the old Edge in the baseline version of Windows 10.

RELATED: What You Need to Know About the New Microsoft Edge Browser

Microsoft is expanding the Your Phone app with more features designed for select Samsung devices. If you have one of these phones, you can now access your phones Android apps directly on your Windows 10 PC. Theyll be running on your phone but you can launch, see, and interact with them on your Windows 10 desktop.

Microsoft may release this feature early to 20H1 and other versions of Windows 10. For now, its only available in Insider builds of 20H2 and newer builds of Windows 10.

In the future, Microsoft says it will go even further:

Later in the year, Samsung Galaxy Note20 users will experience the power and convenience of running multiple apps side by side and we will continue to work with Samsung to bring this feature to additional devices. Apps will launch in separate windows enabling you to interact with multiple apps at the same time.

Microsofts website offers more information about the Apps feature, including a full list of supported devices that can use the Apps feature.

RELATED: Why Android Users Need Windows 10's "Your Phone" App

The Start menu is getting theme-aware tiles. Now, the tile background will be light or dark to match whichever Windows 10 theme youre usinglight or dark.

Previously, the Start menu used your accent color, which means the default Windows 10 theme used a variety of blue icons on a blue background. The shift to using standard theme colors means Windows 10s new application icons look better in the Start menu.

You can still get those tiles that match your theme back, howeverjust head to Settings > Personalization > Color and enable the accent color on Start, taskbar, and action center.

RELATED: How to Enable Windows 10's New Light Theme

Windows 10 now shows browser tabs in your Alt+Tab switcherif you use Edge. Instead of just showing one Edge thumbnail for each browser window, youll see a number of different tabs in the Alt+Tab switcher. So, if youre using several web pages at once, you can quickly find and switch between them just with Alt+Tab.

If you dont like this, thats fineits configurable. Head to Settings > System > Multitasking and you configure Alt+Tab to show your most recent three or five tabsor turn it off completely and get a more classic Alt+Tab experience.

Presumably, other browsers like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox could choose to integrate with the Alt+Tab switcher in the future and show browser tabs, too. After all, the new Edge shares its open-source Chromium codebase with Google Chrome.

RELATED: Windows 10 Will Soon Show Edge Browser Tabs in Alt+Tab

Microsoft has been making pinned sites on the taskbar work better, too. When you pin a website to your taskbar using Microsoft Edge, you can now click (or mouse-over) that taskbar icon to see all your browser tabs for that website.

So, if you pin Gmail to your taskbar in Edge and you have Gmail tabs open in several browser windows, you can click the Gmail icon to find themeven if theyre buried in other Edge browser windows.

RELATED: How to Pin a Website to the Windows 10 Taskbar or Start Menu

If youve used Windows 10s Focus Assist featurewhich automatically hides notifications while youre playing games and using other full-screen applications, among other tasksyoull probably notice that it can be really noisy.

In the spirit of not bugging you with notifications, Focus Assist pops up to show you a notification that hey, its not going to show you any notifications! And, when youre done with your focused activity, Focus Assist pops up a summary of all the notifications it didnt show you. Its pretty distracting.

Now, Microsoft is disabling all these Focus Assist notifications by default, although you can still re-enable them in Settings.

RELATED: How to Disable Windows 10's Annoying Focus Assist Notifications

When you detached a keyboard on a 2-in-1 device, a notification popped up and asked you if you wanted to enable tablet mode. Now, Windows will automatically switch to the new tablet experience added in the May 2020 Update without the prompt or notification.

You can change what happensfor example, to prevent Windows 10 from entering tablet mode automaticallyby heading to Settings > System > Tablet.

Most of these changes are pretty small, but some are really small. Here are a few other ones:

As usual, Microsoft is also fixing a wide variety of smaller performance and stability issues under the hood.

As of August 2020, the update appears pretty done as far as features go.It looks like Microsoft will have months to polish the current features and fix any bugs before the final, stable release.

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Whats New in Windows 10s 20H2 Update, Arriving Fall 2020 - How-To Geek