Microsoft forges ahead with adding new features to Windows 10 as the OS gets another Windows 11 capability
Richer and dynamic ‘weather experience’ for the lock screen is now in testing
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Remember whenMicrosoft said Windows 10 wouldn’t get any more features, and was effectively on ice, with the exception of minor tweaks? Well, the reversal of that policy is clear enough now, as another inbound feature forWindows 11is also coming to its predecessor OS.
Namely a ‘richerweather experience’ – including dynamic, interactive weather updates – on the lock screen.
This is something that’s already been spotted in testing for Windows 11, and is now in thelatest preview buildforWindows 10(version 19045.3992).
It means that when you hover over the weather on the lock screen, further info is revealed. On top of that, if you click the weather card, you get the MSN website weather forecast popping up (inMicrosoft’s Edge browser, as you might guess).
This will be the default setup for the lock screen if its status is set to ‘none’Microsoftexplains, but you will be able to turn it off if you wish.
Analysis: Thawing the feature freeze
Okay, so this is no big deal as a feature, but nonetheless it is a new piece of functionality, and not a minor tweak. Of course, the other addition since Microsoft announced that feature freeze forWindows 10 was the introduction of Copilot– and you couldn’t get a more major move than that.
AsWindows Central(Zac Bowden), which spotted this latest development, points out, late last year, when Copilot was announced for Windows 10, Microsoft did say it was revisiting its decision to halt features for the older OS, and planned to make ‘additional investments’ in theoperating system. It appears that this is happening, then, and we can likely expect further features to be bolted on to Windows 10 as 2024 rolls onwards.
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Furthermore, Bowden has heard on the grapevine that Microsoft will be reopening the Windows 10 Beta channel for testers, which is a clear suggestion that more features will be on the way for the operating system – as they’ll need to go through a full testing process.
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Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - ‘I Know What You Did Last Supper’ - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).
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