Microsoft’s Windows 10 will get an updated slate of features later this year called the Fall Creators Update, the company said Thursday.
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The company didn’t offer much in the way of details at its Build developer show, but charted a broad outline for its plans for the ubiquitous personal computer-operating system. Microsoft has said it will add new tools to Windows 10 in major updates about twice a year.
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The Fall Creators Update — a similar marketing moniker to a spring edition released in April — will come with Timeline, a feature designed to let you jump back into files you were using a few hours or days ago as if you’d never left.
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A separate set of features is aimed at the effort to make Windows useful beyond Microsoft’s PC wheelhouse.
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One, using Microsoft’s Cortana, will synchronize applications between a Windows PC and a smartphone using Apple’s iOS or Google’s Android, allowing you to pick up editing a document where you left off on the other device.
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Another feature expands the realm of the virtual clipboard, enabling a copy and paste function from Windows to other operating systems and back again.
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The tools are the latest sign of Microsoft’s aim to try to reach users regardless of what other operating systems they use, a far cry from a few years ago when the company at this same conference was advertising Windows 10 as the operating system that unified smartphone and laptop and made other operating systems unnecessary.
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Microsoft subsequently shuttered much of its smartphone unit and redefined itself as a builder of its core Windows computer franchise as well as applications for smartphone platforms.