Feature Experience Pack: Microsoft is outsourcing new Windows 10 features

After about a year of rumors, Microsoft is formalizing the Windows Feature Experience Pack today. With these packages, the company wants to offer new features regardless of feature updates for Windows 10. A new version is available in the Beta Channel with the Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.1070.0.

Windows 10 usually receives new features with major feature updates in the spring and fall, most recently with the October update to Windows 10 20H2. Microsoft is evidently not moving this pace fast enough for isolated new features, so from now on the so-called Windows Feature Experience Packs should also provide new individual features in between. On the Windows Insider blog, the company explains that only a limited number of innovations are currently in development for these Windows Feature Experience Packs.

Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.1070.0 im Beta Channel

In the Beta Channel for Windows Insider, which once corresponded to the Slow Ring, before the rings were renamed to Channels by Microsoft in the summer, so the Fast Ring is now called the Dev Channel and the Release Preview Ring has been renamed the Release Preview Channel, A new version is now available with Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.1070.0 which introduces two changes.

Snipping tool and split keyboard

Based on feedback from Windows insiders, the snipping tool built into the operating system, which can be invoked with “Windows key + Shift + S”, can now save captured screenshots directly to a folder of your choice in File Explorer . Microsoft has also revised the virtual touch keyboard for 2-in-1 devices, which include a number of Surface products. If the 2-in-1 device is held in portrait mode, i.e. used in portrait orientation, the touch keyboard can now be divided between the left and right areas of the screen, so that you can more easily reach all the keys with your thumb, for example .

New packages arrive via Windows Update

Before the final version of the Windows Feature Experience Packs is available to all users in the normal way via Windows Update, Microsoft, like all other versions, first wants to offer them to insiders across channels. At least Windows 10 20H2 Build 19042.662 from the Beta Channel must be installed on the system for Insiders to get the latest Feature Experience Pack. A reboot is required after the update so that the functions can be used.

Brief Review: Windows Experience Feature Packs first appeared for some users in December 2019, but Microsoft hasn’t yet to comment on their availability or details. That didn’t change with the May Update to Windows 10 20H1 aka version 2004, when more people got access to the packages. In June, for example, the opposite was said ZDNetthat Microsoft has nothing to announce about it. Now that has changed with the official announcement of the Feature Experience Packs on the Insider Blog.