Wake up everyone, a new Windows feature
update just dropped. And technically, even though this has a ton of new features, it
technically is not the 23H2 update that still is to come. This one is being called the Moment
4 update. So of course I'm going to go over a lot of big features and then even some of the
smaller ones that I think are still pretty cool. And I will note that this won't
install automatically. To get it, what you do is go into Windows Update and
then either enable the "Get the latest updates as soon as they're available" option,
or you might just see this thing for "2023-09 Cumulative Update Preview" and download and
install that. And that should give it to you. I will put links in the description to Microsoft
blog posts, where they go into detail about all the new changes and features, because I'm not
going to cover every single little thing. Some of them I don't think are important, but it
might be to you. So we can start off with the feature that is being promoted the most by
Microsoft, and that is the Copilot preview. So that's the AI thing. Basically it's Bing
Chat where right now you'll see a new icon show up in the taskbar, you can turn it off,
but when you click it, you'll see the same thing that you would on the Bing Chat website.
So you can ask it stuff. It uses GPT-4 on the backend. And also it can do some basic stuff
like changing to dark mode if you ask it to, but that's not really any more convenient
than just searching the settings for it. Also, it can apparently integrate into some
apps like Outlook to help with summarizing emails and stuff. Although I haven't really
tried that out. Fortunately, it's a bit more than just a wrapper for the Bing chat website.
It does integrate a little bit. For example, if you use the Snipping Tool while the thing
is open, it will automatically catch that from the clipboard and ask if you want to send it and
analyze it and see what's in there, for example. So it's kind of cool. You can analyze
images and stuff. Now I don't really want to spend a lot of time on that feature.
Personally, I don't find it very useful, or at least any more useful than just
using the Bing Chat. So you can read more about it if you want. I'm sure
they're going to be adding stuff to it. Now, the next new feature is one that a lot
of people have been waiting for, and that is native support for all sorts of file archives, not
just zip files. It now supports all these such as 7-zip files, RAR files, tar.gz, tarball files.
And you can see here, if there is for example a tar.gz file, it can extract just fine. Though
there are a couple of things I want to note. First of all, the first time you go to open it, you might have to select to use File Explorer
to open it. It apparently doesn't set that by default. And also it seems like unlike
zip files, you have to actually extract the files first to open them. If you click
into it, you can see what files are in there. But for example, if I try to open this image while
in this, it just says corrupt until I actually extract it. Next up, we have a new feature for
Notepad, which is now, even if you close it, it will still keep your session open. So
if you have a bunch of note tabs open, you close it, it will reopen them
when you open the notepad back up. So this is really useful if you don't really
necessarily want to save a bunch of note text files, but you still want to take some
notes on something. It's a little bit safer to do so in Notepad. Also, there's
some major new features in the Paint app, and that is that it supports
transparency and it has layers now. You can see how I open up the image and
then I can create a new layer on top of it, scribble on it, and then hide that if
I want, so it doesn't mess with the base image. Paint even also has a new feature to
automatically remove the background of an image, again using AI, and I found it to
be pretty decent for what it is. It wasn't like super amazing quality. For
example, I tried to remove the background of this emoji and it did leave kind of a white
halo around it. So it doesn't seem to be perfect, but probably for a lot of people, decent
enough. Apparently this version is not rolling out to everyone at the same time for some
reason, but hopefully it will to everyone soon. You can check if you have it by going into
the Microsoft Store and then clicking "Get Updates" to make sure that at least download is
the last one that you have. Also those signed up for the Windows Insider program will also
get a new version of paint that has something called co-creator, which will allow it
to AI generate images that you type in. So that's really cool. It basically
uses the Bing Image Generator. But yeah, paint is getting an upgrade. But not
to be outdone by the Snipping Tool, which is also getting some new features. Now,
if you take a screenshot that has text in it, you can press this Text Actions button and
it will use optical character recognition and I think some AI, to analyze the text
and let you select it with a cursor, and then you can copy it from there, or you
can hit "Copy All Text". And you can also use this "Quick Redact" button to automatically
cover up any phone numbers and email addresses, either of them. So this is a really cool way
to natively in Windows, get text from an image. Also in the update blog, it mentioned that
you're supposed to be able to now record your microphone with the video screen recording mode
in Snipping Tool. I didn't have that. So again, it's an annoying thing where they say, "Hey,
you can do this now." And then you actually can't. And I believe this is actually the
same thing for this text analysis tool. You might not be able to get it right
away, but at least you can check by again, going into the Microsoft Store and hitting
Get Updates and see if it gives you the latest one. Moving on, there's a new
feature in the Photos app. If you go into the edit mode for an image, you
can now click to blur the background. Again, it uses AI to analyze it, then gives
you a preview where you can adjust the blur intensity. And it even lets you use a brush tool
to add or remove parts that will be blurred. And for the most part, it got the main subject
right. This was a tough one because some stuff is actually in front of him and the
background was already kind of blurred, but at least it got the edges
of him and the main book right. The File Explorer has also gotten some
updates. They say it's been modernized. One new thing you'll notice is the Gallery
option, which I think pretty much just shows recent photos and stuff similar to what the
Photos app is going to do. But one cool new little thing is you can finally now drag tabs
from one File Explorer window onto another. I guess you couldn't do that before, but now you
can. Also, there's an option for a new Details pane that will show up when you select a
file before it was just the preview pane, but now you can have it show more info,
not just the image or whatever. Next up, there is a new Windows Backup app that seems
to be just for if you're like moving to a new PC or something, I don't think this is
for like a full backup of your computer. It says it backs up your files and apps and stuff,
but from my understanding, what I was reading, it doesn't actually back up the files of the
app, like the installation itself. It backs up a list of what programs you have installed
and then the settings along with them, and then just re-downloads them on a
new computer and restores the settings. So if that's the case, I would have to guess
that that only works with Microsoft store apps, although I'm not sure. But strangely, it really
doesn't tell you exactly what it's backing up, which I didn't like. And I have to
assume that for the files and folders, it's just backing up the library things
like you can already do with OneDrive. So to be honest, I would not trust this thing if
I was wiping a computer and restoring it. Though, if I was just moving to a secondary computer,
it's probably fine for just getting your stuff over there. But again, it doesn't tell you
exactly what it's backing up. So I'm not a fan of that. Moving on, the Narrator
feature now has more natural voices. So now if you go and search
for the Narrator feature, it will probably show you this thing and give
you the option to download these new voices, and then you'll have the option to use them. And
they do sound a lot better. They are the AI neural voices, I guess. So they're more natural.
They're not just like robot voices so much. Next up, there's some new features in the
volume mixer. So if you go to the system tray, click that, and then click this thing. Now
it'll show you all the sound devices. And if you scroll down to the bottom, it shows any
currently running programs that have sound playing, and you can individually
adjust the volume of all those. There's also a option to enable spatial
audio for Windows, which I think is some kind of like virtual surround sound if you
have headphones. I probably wouldn't turn this on unless you're like watching
a movie or something. Cause again, it might manipulate how the audio
sounds, but still kind of cool that you can relatively easily find that, if you
didn't even know that was a feature before. Moving on, another cool little feature is
Auto Dimming. If you have a device that has a presence sensor. So this is probably going to be
either a tablet or a laptop. So if you walk away, it will apparently automatically dim your screen.
And when you come back, brighten it back up to save energy. And also Microsoft is releasing a
new program, Outlook For Windows, which is free. And it seems to be kind of like a replacement
for the Windows Mail app and sort of like the Microsoft 365 full blown Outlook. So I
don't know if it has all those features, but it's free at least. So it gets
you closer to that. So now let's move on and talk about some new settings
options. Some of these are really cool. First of all, when you go into the Settings,
you'll notice that there is a new look to it. It shows some recent and suggested
settings. It'll show you personalization, that kind of thing. But one really new
cool setting is the option to add the End Task button when you right click a
program on the taskbar. And to do this, you go into Settings and then System and
then For Developers and then enable End Task. Just be careful when you use this because it
doesn't seem to give any kind of confirmation. So unlike if you just close a program
and you were working on something, it will remind you, "Hey, do you want
to save this before you close it?" If you just hit the end task button, you're
not going to have an option to do that. So just be aware of that. There's
also a new menu for Passkeys, which is basically a replacement for
passwords. I made a whole video about this, talking about how to set it up with
Google, I'll have that pop out. But now you can go into the settings and see which
passkeys you have saved in Windows Hello, you can remove them. So that's just
convenient. Also I'll point out, don't mix passkeys up with the security keys, the
physical things. They're completely different, so just don't mix those up. Next up, a really cool
feature that a lot of people have been waiting for is Dynamic Lighting, which now lets you
natively support RGB lighting for your computer. You can find this under Personalization
and you can see options like setting it to your Windows accent color. You can change
it manually to be solid or a breathing effect, that sort of thing. Now, right now I can't really test this out because I don't have any
devices that support it through this. They're adding more support for a lot of
devices, like apparently Logitech and most of theirs will support it. And they do show that
a lot of companies are partnering with them to ensure that most devices probably eventually will
support this. So fortunately you won't have to use the often extremely bloated software that comes
with a lot of devices just to control the colors. A little bit more customization options
for Taskbar. Now you have the option to not show the date and time, in the date and time
settings, if you don't want that showing. Also, you can now choose to have it never combine
objects in the taskbar. So it'll always show each window as a separate thing. You
can find that under Taskbar Behavior settings and then the option "Combined
taskbar buttons and hide labels" to Never. And then it'll look like this. And also
you can set that separately for secondary monitors if you want. And also a little
change, is now notifications will show as a bell that's filled in, in the taskbar
bottom right. And if it's no notifications, it'll just show as an outline. A
couple other random new little changes. First of all, the new update now uses
the fluent emojis that Microsoft has. So they're kind of like 3D looking, they're
kind of cool. And also you can now go into the apps list and uninstall Cortana if you've
been waiting to do that more easily. Finally, there's a few business oriented
features that I can mention. You can now set it so Windows can log in
to a business account with no passwords at all. So using Windows Hello, using
some method or another. Another feature, now if you have employees using a cloud Windows
PC, you can now have it boot directly into that using the Windows 365 PC thing. And
also if you're now using a cloud PC, you can basically use the same way to switch
between that, like you will a virtual desktop. So it's a bit more seamless. So yeah, I guess
that's pretty much it. Again, this is not even a 23H2 update. I don't know how many features
are going to be added into that one. If there's a significant amount, again, I'll make a video
about it. So be sure to subscribe for that. If you enjoyed this video, let me know down in the
comments, what is your favorite new feature? And if I missed any, be sure to let me know down
there too. And of course, if you liked the video again, be sure to like it. It always helps out
with the YouTube algorithm. If you want to keep watching, the next video I'd recommend is where
I talk about all the new tools in Microsoft Power Toys, which is like a suite of really cool
tools that you can download from Microsoft and all the new features that they added for that
one recently, so I'll put that link right there. You can just click on that. Thanks so much
for watching and I'll see you in the next one.
