This brought a design consistency across the store app and the store web which wasn’t looking bad at all. However, since this redesign made the store a hybrid web app, it brought with it several issues as well. Users started complaining about the store app being slow and sluggish. A lot of the UI elements felt off since the UI was simply web instead of a natively written code.

However, it seems like Microsoft has started to roll back the store app to its original state to some of its users. I see this as a good thing since the store app is back in its native glory. The overall store experience is way faster as it previously was before the web integration re-design.

This could just be Microsoft testing the waters since the rollback is reportedly affecting only a handful of users.

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This trend continued with Windows 10 PCs as well. Till date, Google has published only one app in the Windows app store – the Google app. However, it might just be the case where Google could be in the phase of deprecating this one as well.

Searching for “google” in the Microsoft Store no longer pulls the app as the search result. However, the app is still published and can be installed and works without any issues. Now this happens right when the Google app stopped working on Windows Phones. This makes it quite inevitable that Google app for Windows 10 could be taken down at any point.

The direct link to the Microsoft Store for the Google app is here.

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In Forza Horizon 4, Microsoft has been pushing some of the highlight features of the game like the dynamic seasons, etc. However, there are yet some hidden delights that may bring a smile to a lot of Windows XP fans.

Forza Horizon 4 has a car customization option where you could personalize your car for your own taste. Here, you have an option to change car horns as well. But here’s the fun part – among the gazillion horn sounds to choose from, there’s also the iconic Windows XP “shutdown” horn sound.

Pretty cool, right?

This rather came out of nowhere. Having the Windows XP “shutdown” sound as their car’s horn is quite ludicrous but many of the Windows XP fans are going to love it.

Forza Horizon 4 is set to launch on 2nd of October for both Xbox One and Windows 10 PC.

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It was Redstone 3 (Fall Creators Update) when Microsoft officially started adding Fluent Design enhancements to Windows 10 featuring elements like Acrylic material and reveal-highlight effect. Although the changes were quite subtle, the change was much appreciated.

However, with Redstone 4 (April 2018 Update) and Redstone 5 (October 2018 Update), Microsoft has taken bold steps by adding Fluent Design elements in more prominent areas of the OS like the Start Menu, Taskbar flyouts, Settings app, etc. and is progressing very well in 19H1 builds as well.

Starting Windows 10 19H1, login screen on Windows 10 will feature Acrylic material when the lock screen is dismissed. This is by far the boldest step Microsoft has taken so far to bring Fluent Design in more prominent areas of the OS.

With the announcement of Fluent Design System, Microsoft had already teased Acrylic in the login screen with its Fluent Design concepts back in May 2017 and it’s good to see these concepts turning into reality with these new builds.

Windows 10 19H1 is due to release in the Spring of 2018.

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Forza Horizon 4 is announced for both Windows 10 PC and Xbox One and features historic Britain in a shared open world environment. Similar to Forza Motorsport 7, Microsoft pushes dynamic seasons in Forza Horizon 4 as well.

“Dynamic seasons change everything at the world’s greatest automotive festival. Go it alone or team up with others to explore beautiful and historic Britain in a shared open world. Collect, modify and drive over 450 cars. Race, stunt, create and explore – choose your own path to become a Horizon Superstar.” – the Microsoft Store description reads.

Forza Horizon 4 also supports native 4K UHD resolution along with HDR10 and is an Xbox One X Enhanced title. Forza Horizon 4 is also a play anywhere title powered by Xbox Live. The total download size of the game amounts up to 28GB and can be downloaded from here.

The full version of Forza Horizon 4 will be available on October 2, 2018.

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Today, a job listing has revealed more details about the Windows Core OS. The job listing titled “Software Engineering Manager” has revealed that the “The SiGMa Device Platform (DPlat) team owns the definition and delivery of Windows Core OS (WCOS)”. The engineer is supposed to work on integrating new software experiences with new hardware.

“If so the Device Platform team may be for you. The SiGMa Device Platform (DPlat) team owns the definition and delivery of Windows Core OS (WCOS), which is the OS shared across all new devices. DPlat also delivers the modern driver platform, including the tools to create & validate drivers along with driver flighting & services system for all versions of Windows. Finally, DPlat owns ensuring that Windows is a viable platform for key silicon partners, and for OEMs by doing hardware co-engineering during the development of new operating systems (e.g. WCOS) to ensure that version of Windows is ready for the ecosystem when it releases,” the job listing reads.

“OneCore: The OneCore team Owns WCOS SKU and OS layering efforts (GameCore, Onecore/OnecoreUAP) APISets, Flexible Links, Windows Compositional Database (WCD), and driving cross org WCOS efforts, like state separation,” Microsoft explains one of the responsibilities of the candidate.

It’s worth noting that this job is no longer accepting applications.

Thanks Chris for the tip!

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Today, Microsoft started rolling out an update to the Windows Community Toolkit that bumped up the version to 4.0.3. With all the other enhancements, this update also brings Dark Mode to the app.

Users have lately been demanding for dark-mode everywhere within the apps that they use. With nicer aesthetics, dark-mode also has its practical benefits with being less eye-straining while using at night or in any dark environment. Professional productivity apps like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator has had dark-mode for ages now due to overnight usage by its users.

It looks like the silicon valley is finally listening to its users. Microsoft is testing dark-mode in file explorer in Windows 10 Redstone 5 which is due this fall. Google has already rolled out dark-mode in YouTube. Even Apple is testing system-wide dark-mode in MacOS Mojave.

Although, Windows 10 already had a system-wide switch to dark-mode but it was (and still is) very inconsistent with some parts of the OS remaining unchanged. Even some of the UWP apps never switched to dark-mode with Windows Community Toolkit Sample App being among them.

Nevertheless, it’s good to see Windows Community Toolkit finally catching up with this trend and will surely impress its users.

People Love Dark Themes

Users everywhere have different tastes and expectations but dark themes have become surprisingly popular these days. The majority of software makers such as Apple and Microsoft have already launched them for most of their apps.

Microsoft has launched dark visual for a number of pre-installed Windows 10 core apps including the Settings app and it’s also coming to the File Explorer later this year. A dark mode in all apps and tools is among the top feature requests from Windows 10 users, and Microsoft is fully aware of this.

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The 1px border around the window edges is by far the most hated element of Windows 10’s design. Mainly because a window is the most basic thing that makes Windows, Windows. And the worst thing about it is that it’s always there, everywhere.

Microsoft recently updated their documentation for NavigationView control and the new documentation shows off some screenshots of how the control works. Besides the control itself, the screenshot also features a beautiful drop shadow around the window and yes – without the 1px border.

The screenshot is certainly just a mere mock-up. But it gives us a closer look at how this could look like for specific apps. However, this is destined to happen at some point in time.

“I’ve previously prototyped this. It fell apart for me not in isolation – you don’t need a border there – but in usage with a number of applications / multitasking wherein it was difficult to effectively determine application boundaries and grab points,” Microsoft’s engineer explains on Reddit.

Microsoft had already shown off many mock-ups featuring the similar absence of 1px border before. In fact, in recent Redstone 5 builds, Microsoft has already gotten rid of the 1px border around the edges of many UWP controls such as context menus and dialogue boxes and was replaced with a drop-shadow instead.

Updated with statement from Microsoft’s engineer.

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However, a Microsoft Store employee claims that the Microsoft engineering team is actively working on “a new line of phones”. And no, it’s not a part of the Lumia series (for some obvious reasons) neither we’re sure whether the Surface team is behind it. What we know, however, is that this new edition of Android-powered phones will be sold on Microsoft Store.

It’s likely that this is a mistake and we cannot verify the authenticity of the claims. There’s a possibility that the employee is referring to Microsoft Edition Android phones from third-party OEMs. The fact that the devices will be powered by Android could be his speculation as well. Another Microsoft Store employee says that the agent probably had inside information and nothing is official at the moment.

We’ve lately seen Microsoft pushing its suite of apps on Android. Last year Microsoft bought Edge browser to Android along with Microsoft Launcher. This year Microsoft refreshed its MSN News app with Microsoft News with the same theme and logo that was previously found on Windows 10.

Along with apps, Microsoft has also been pushing a lot of its services on Androids that work with Windows 10. The best examples we have right now is Microsoft Graph and Windows Timeline along with Cloud-clipboard which is due this fall. Microsoft also showed off Your Phone app for Windows 10 that somewhat mirrors phone features with Windows 10 PC.

Again it’s worth mentioning that this is entirely a rumour and nothing is official yet. Microsoft may scrape this idea at the last minute and we’ve seen this notion before.

What do our readers think? Would you ever by a Microsoft branded Android phone?

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article is based on a claim made by a Microsoft Store employee. Windows Latest makes no claims, guarantees about the accuracy or completeness in this article, and shall not be held responsible for anything we say in this article.

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We’ve also seen many software references in Microsoft’s own insiders builds. In fact, we recently reported about the previous insider build with a massive API changelog that had multiple APIs and event handlers with terms such as “hinge-states” which align perfectly with this type of device.

Over the span of years, many designers have also imagined Andromeda in their amazing concepts. While they all have tried demonstrating productivity and basic functionality in such a device, this concept is rather unique.

A Microsoft enthusiast and designer, David Breyer on Twitter tweeted out a render of how gaming would work on such a dual-screen foldable device.

laptop mode & gaming mode pic.twitter.com/VRD8Z9wKgD

— David Breyer (@D_Breyer) June 30, 2018

As you can see, David imagines one of the two displays of the device being used as a usual display for gaming and the second display being used as an Xbox controller. David has been behind many such popular images across the Microsoft community and some of them show us how the second display can be used as a keyboard just like this Xbox controller.

Replacing an actual physical Xbox controller with a virtual software controller might not make any sense to many of our viewers. However, we’ve seen a similar evolution before. Remember when software keyboard was introduced on an iPhone back in 2007? The idea was rejected by many at the time. But today, the same tech has become the most essential thing of today’s mobile devices. So, who knows?

Speaking of Andromeda itself, this device is reportedly launching this fall. We’ve also reported about a leaked Microsoft’s internal email that claims the existence of Andromeda. This ambitious project by the Surface team has gained a lot of hype already and such concepts are adding a whole lot to it.

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