Next Windows 10 update to add easy file sharing

Microsoft is to launch a tool that should make it easier for Windows 10 users to share photos, videos and documents with friends and family, and send them messages via email or Skype.

The Mypeople feature, letting you access “key people” from icons on your taskbar (see screenshot), will arrive in the Windows 10 Creators Update, due in March 2017.

Other new tools let you read and reply to Android phone texts from your PC’S desktop, and send emojis – little cartoon-like animations – to other users in what Microsoft calls “shoulder taps”.

Improvements to the Edge browser include a session manager that lets you restore tabs from previous sessions browsing the web. There will be changes to the Action Centre too, with sliders for audio and screen brightness replacing pre-defined settings.

Painting in 3D

While these tools will find favour with many Windows 10 users, Microsoft’s main aim with the Creators Update is to get more people drawing and designing in Windows 10. To this end, the company has revamped its 30-year-old Paint app as a program for turning 2D objects into 3D.

Alongside this app Microsoft unveiled its first ever desktop PC, called the Surface Studio, which it hopes to persuade artists and designers to use instead of Apple Macs. It will be priced $2,999 when it goes on sale in the US later this year, but no UK price has been confirmed. There will also be new virtual-reality headsets running Windows 10 from HP, Lenovo, Dell, Acer and ASUS.

An early version of the Creators Update is available to users signed up to the ‘Fast Ring’ of the Windows Insider Program ( https://insider. windows.com). They can install the new Paint app from the Windows Store at www. snipca.com/22343. For more

info on the Creators Update visit www.snipca.com/22342.

Read our next issue to discover which new and updated programs you should run in Windows 10 – out on Weds 23 Nov.