Hands-on with the new tablet experience in Windows 10 build 18970

By Sean Endicott
published

Windows 10 build 18970 started rolling out to Fast ring Insiders yesterday. The build includes a new tablet experience for 2-in-1 PCs, the ability to reset your PC back to a fresh state through a cloud download, and brings the new Cortana experience to everyone.

The most notable change in this build is the new tablet experience. When a user flips a 2-in-1 PC around while running this build, the new experience automatically activates. It has spaced out touch targets along the taskbar, a File Explorer optimized for touch, and the touch keyboard automatically pops up when you tap within a text field.

The new tablet experience is separate from Windows 10 Tablet Mode, which is still present in this build and can be toggled on and off as usual.

Sean Endicott
Sean Endicott
News Writer and apps editor

Sean Endicott brings nearly a decade of experience covering Microsoft and Windows news to Windows Central. He joined our team in 2017 as an app reviewer and now heads up our day-to-day news coverage. If you have a news tip or an app to review, hit him up at sean.endicott@futurenet.com (opens in new tab).

2 Comments
  • The tablet thing is pretty cool.
  • A long awaited features for changing the tablet experience. Makes all the sense though it's part of the tablet mode, as it also incorporates UI changes across the board in the OS to optimize for tablet use, especially for 2-in-1's. windows has dedicated settings your optimize and automatic the OS for touch and pen input, also when converting a 2 in 1 from a laptop to a tablet device. In my view it is odd it is part of desktop mode. Oh, OS fragmentation...eh....for the win??? (sigh).