Build 10525
The most exciting news in this post is that we have a new build for PCs we’re releasing today to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring – Build 10525.
This is our first new build since the release of Windows 10, and I’m very happy to talk about one new thing that you’ll see because it really highlights both how your feedback influences the product development as well as illustrating how some things will get implemented at different times depending on when we’re trying to stabilize and drive quality vs. when we’re open for new feature work.
Updated color options!
We got a lot of feedback on the default color for Start, Acton Center, Taskbar, and Title bars and that you wanted to be able to change to reflect your preferences. This feature is now available (though still early) in build 10525 for you to try. This is off by default, but you can turn it on by toggling this (Settings > Personalization > Colors):
Memory Manager Improvements:
In Windows 10, we have added a new concept in the Memory Manager called a compression store, which is an in-memory collection of compressed pages. This means that when Memory Manager feels memory pressure, it will compress unused pages instead of writing them to disk. This reduces the amount of memory used per process, allowing Windows 10 to maintain more applications in physical memory at a time. This also helps provide better responsiveness across Windows 10. The compression store lives in the System process’s working set. Since the system process holds the store in memory, its working set grows larger exactly when memory is being made available for other processes. This is visible in Task Manager and the reason the System process appears to be consuming more memory than previous releases.
We do have a few known issues with this build.
Part of the fun of being a Windows Insider is getting to tinker with prerelease software before the rest of the world, but you should be very aware as an Insider that prerelease software will come with bugs and things that are incomplete. Make sure you know and accept what you’re opting in to when you join the program, and of course make sure to back up all of your personal data before you begin.