Windows 10 build 17083 releases with new features

Latest preview of Windows 10 (build 17083) introduces a font experience, a new app to review data that Microsoft collects, reintroduces Quiet hours as Focus assist, and a lot more.

Windows 10 build 17803
Windows 10 build 17803

Microsoft pushes build 17083 as part of the Windows 10 version 1803 (Redstone 4) development for PCs enrolled in the Fast ring, and even for those who selected the Skip Ahead option. This is a minor update that brings a new set of features, enhancements, and slew of fixes.

Windows 10 Insider Preview build 17083, according to Microsoft, brings the fonts experience from Control Panel to the Settings app. Introduces a new Diagnostic Data Viewer app that allows you to review the data the company collects about your device. You’ll find a lot of new improvements on Timeline, Quiet hours, Windows Hello, Settings app, and much more.

What’s new on Windows 10 build 17083

Fonts settings

Starting with build 17083, Windows 10 brings the Fonts experience found in Control Panel to the Personalization section in the Settings app.

In this new page, you’ll be able to see the fonts that are currently installed, or to install or uninstall fonts.

Fonts settings on Windows 10 build 17083
Fonts settings on Windows 10 build 17083

It also offers a view of color fonts and variable fonts, which were functionalities not available in Control Panel.

The initial page for Fonts settings provides a short preview of each font family, and if a font has multi-color capabilities, then the preview will showcase this.

When you click on one of the family previews, it’ll open the details page that provides previews for each of the fonts for that family, along with other information. In addition, there’s a separate variable-font details page that allows you to explore the continuous, variable-design capabilities of the font.

Alongside the new experience, you can now download fonts from the Microsoft Store. (To access the font section in the Store, you’ll need to click the “Get more fonts in Microsoft Store” link included with the Fonts page.)

Diagnostic Data

Windows 10 build 17083 is also introducing some changes to the way Microsoft collects data about your device to improve the user experience making data collection more transparent.

In this release, you’ll find two new options in the Settings > Privacy > Diagnostics & feedback page to decide how Microsoft collects data.

Diagnostic Data Viewer

Windows 10 introduces a new Diagnostic Data Viewer app in this flight that lets you review the diagnostic data your device is sending to Microsoft.

In order to get started, you’ll need to go to Settings > Privacy > Diagnostics & feedback, and enable the Diagnostic Data Viewer toggle switch, and then click the button below to launch the app.

Diagnostic Data Viewer app
Diagnostic Data Viewer app
  • View your diagnostics events: In the left column, you can review your diagnostic events. Selecting an event opens the detailed event view, which shows the exact data uploaded to Microsoft.
  • Search your diagnostic events: The search box at the top of the screen lets you search all of the diagnostic event data.
  • Filter your diagnostic event categories: Clicking the menu button, you’ll find a list of diagnostic event categories, which defines how the events are used by Microsoft.

Additionally, standard user can now make changes to the Diagnostic Data levels.

Timeline

In Timeline there are a new number of improvements, including a new option to delete everything from a given hour or day from the context menu.

When you are in the default view, you will see a new “clear all from day” option when right-clicking on an activity. On the other hand, if you clicked “see all” to see activities for just one day, this option changes to allow you to “clear all from hour” instead.

In order to improve privacy control, a new setting has been added that allows you to sync your activities to the cloud for a seamless cross-device experience. You can enable “Let Windows sync my activities from this PC to the cloud” in the settings app, or you can enable it via an option provided at the bottom of Timeline. Until new users enable this setting, Timeline will only show four days of activities.

Quiet hours (Focus assist)

Starting with Windows 10 build 17083, Quiet hours now becomes Focus assist, and you can now switch between the three Focus Assist modes by right-clicking the Action Center icon in the taskbar.

Focus assist menu
Focus assist menu

Windows Hello

In the release, you can set up Windows Hello Face, Fingerprint or PIN straight from your lock screen by clicking the Windows Hello tile under Sign-in options.

Apps settings

This flight also updates the settings page for app to include the version number of the app you’re currently running.

Startup settings

On the Startup settings page, you can choose to sort the apps listed by name, state, or startup impact.

App permissions

In the Privacy settings section, you can now decide which Microsoft Store apps can access your pictures, videos, or documents folders. This means that moving forward, when an Store app needs access to any of these content, a consent dialog will pop up prompting you to accept or deny the request.

Hyper-V

In the virtualization side, this release adds an extended user-mode API for third-party virtualization stacks and applications to create and manage partitions at the hypervisor level, configure memory mappings for the partition, and create and control execution of virtual processors.

Ease of Access

As of the ongoing effort to make Windows 10 more inclusive, build 17083 introduces an option for those who would prefer their scrollbars stay always visible, which can change on Settings > Ease of Access > Display.

In order to help reduce accidental invocation of this hotkey, Microsoft has added a new checkbox for this under Settings > Ease of Access > Color filters settings page.

Additional Ease of Access improvement include:

  • New Narrator landmarks throughout Settings are now available to quickly move between search, navigation list, and main landmarks.
  • The Ease of Access section shortens the name of the “Cursor, pointer and touch feedback” page to “Cursor & pointer size”.
  • The positions of Color Filters and High Contrast in the navigation list have been reorganized.
  • The High Contrast page switches the default theme to be “High Contrast Black”.
  • New links have been added to the Narrator settings page for learning how to use Narrator and for adding more voices.
  • The Speech page has been updated to present information and settings about Dictation, Cortana, as well as Windows Speech Recognition.
  • Ease of Access search terms and results now align better with the available settings.
  • Ease of Access pages now show “Related settings” links.

Additional improvements

Alongside all these new features and improvements, Windows 10 build 17083 includes a number of other changes. For example, starting with this release Sets (tabs in apps) experimental feature is no longer available.

Windows 10 now uses Cortana’s Notebook as the primary entrance for Cortana’s lists, and as a result, it’s removing the entry point for lists from Cortana’s navigation pane.

Windows Defender’s system tray context menu to now use the modern style.

Update and Shutdown is now available again as an option if you click the power button in Start when there’s an update pending.

Microsoft is listing the complete set of improvements, fixes, and known issues for Windows 10 Insider Preview build 17083 at the Windows Blog. In case you missed it, you can read all the changes for Windows 10 build 17074 in this article.

Download Windows 10 build 17083

Although there are no ISO files for Windows 10 build 17083, the update is available immediately through the Fast ring for PCs and using the Skip Ahead option. This preview build will download and install automatically on your device, but you can always force the update from Settings > Update & security > Windows Update and clicking the Check for updates button.

You can also check out these resources:

About the author

Mauro Huculak is a Windows How-To Expert who started Pureinfotech in 2010 as an independent online publication. He has also been a Windows Central contributor for nearly a decade. Mauro has over 14 years of experience writing comprehensive guides and creating professional videos about Windows and software, including Android and Linux. Before becoming a technology writer, he was an IT administrator for seven years. In total, Mauro has over 20 years of combined experience in technology. Throughout his career, he achieved different professional certifications from Microsoft (MSCA), Cisco (CCNP), VMware (VCP), and CompTIA (A+ and Network+), and he has been recognized as a Microsoft MVP for many years. You can follow him on X (Twitter), YouTube, LinkedIn and About.me.