While development of Windows 10 Redstone 4 is in its final stages, the work on its successor is already starting to pick up the pace.

The sixth build in what Microsoft calls the Skip Ahead ring was released this past week and it contains a significant amount of work on the Sets feature.

Sets adds a tabbed experience to Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps that allow you to keep all your work in one single app window. Imagine using Microsoft Edge and instead of opening other browser tabs you instead open Word, File Explorer, and other UWP apps.

This feature has the ability to save your tabs for the next time you open up that same program, it actually asks you if you want to open all those previous tabs, so if you were working on a project and needed to take a break – all of the tabs will be there for you to go right back to the point where you left off when working.

Some of the improvements/tweaks they have made to Sets in Windows 10 Redstone 5 Build 17639 include:

  • Drag and drop app tabs within and between Sets windows.
  • Tabs now show up when you use Alt & Tab to view open apps/programs.
  • Improved settings options to turn Sets on and off plus control whether individual tabs show up when you use Alt & Tab to view opens apps/programs. In addition, you can add apps to a list that prevent them from using the Sets feature.
  • Improvements between File Explorer and Sets. Note: For me this is the one program I really have wanted to see tabs in and Sets is delivering that feature set.
  • Added Right Click context menu for closing and moving tabs.
  • A cleaner previous tabs dialog that allows you restore all or select tabs.

There are several other fixes and improvements listed in the release notes for Build 17639.

In addition to all the Sets work that was done, Microsoft has also added battery percentages for peripheral devices that are paired via Bluetooth so that you can quickly see how much battery your device has left.

There is a bug when attempting to move some tabs around and you may find that your app/program will crash and close. Just be savvy working on pre-release builds this early in their development cycle as they can be notoriously buggy.

I will add that having Sets in Redstone 5 builds this early bodes very well for the feature making the final release because there will be a lot of time to work on it. In my opinion, the earlier a feature is added to the test builds, the more testing it gets which means more time to stabilize it across the system.

Enjoy your testing!