Windows 10 testers have been graced with a brand new preview build for the update due to land in the first half of 2020, which introduces a brand new trick for that revamped Cortana app.

Build 18975 (20H1) has been pushed to the fast ring with the headline change being the ability to slowly move the Cortana window around to anywhere you'd like around the desktop.

Of course, another change recently introduced in preview was the introduction of a brand new chat-based interface for Cortana allowing you to interact more naturally with the digital assistant, and Microsoft notes that because of this, you might well wish to keep Cortana around for longer around the desktop.

Bearing that in your mind, the opportunity to shift the window around, away from the default position, is a vital one. All you have to do is grab the title bar and drag your window wherever you would like, and it's also easy to resize for your own liking, too.

Essentially, this is a part of the move to decouple Cortana from the taskbar and check function, which makes it another app, so obviously it should function like every other Windows application in terms of having the ability to move and resize it.

Not everyone might find this transformation though, at least away from first. For starters, it's only rolling out to testers who curently have the new chat-based Cortana (which has initially only been pushed to Windows Insiders in america), and contains only been deployed to 1 / 2 of them. The rollout continues to open up further as Microsoft gets feedback and hones the new feature.

Linux polishing

In this build, Microsoft has additionally made tweaks towards the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), namely fixing a "number of localhost reliability issues", so hopefully things should run more smoothly (although remember, you're still beta testing these fixes here).

Furthermore, the opportunity to rename virtual desktops has been presented to all testers within the fast ring. So instead of Desktop 1, 2, and so on, you can give these more informative names which persist after rebooting your machine.

This transformation was actually introduced for 50% of testers three weeks ago, therefore it is becoming open to all Windows Insiders inside a month - although the time any feature takes to fully roll out will of course vary depending on its complexity, and also the issues Microsoft encounters on the way.

Together with these bigger changes, there's a load of minor bug fixes, including a solution for all those encountering an 'error 0xC0000142' when attempting to upgrade to recent preview builds. There are a number of known issues, too, all of which are detailed in Microsoft's article on the build.

The biggest gremlin appears to pertain to the new Reset this PC cloud download option which doesn't work when certain optional features are installed with Windows 10. Also, it's wrongly calculating the amount of disk space that must definitely be freed up in the event it detects there not enough space to proceed.

This ought to be fixed soon, Microsoft notes, but for now, you need to release 5GB more disk space than suggested by the Windows prompt.

Microsoft is further thinking about squashing more problems with the 20H1 update in a 'bug bash' that is scheduled to start on September 25, running right through to October 2.