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The latest Windows Insider build can boost battery life and clean your desktop

Jayce Wagner
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Microsoft is hard at work on the Creators Update, releasing yet another Windows Insider build this week, bundling some helpful new features together, and patching a host of new bugs. Build 16179 rolls out a new power management scheme aptly titled “Power Throttling,” among some smaller improvements throughout Windows.

What is Power Throttling? Well, it is a working title for a new framework Microsoft hopes will improve the battery life users get out of laptops and mobile devices running the Windows 10 Creators Update.

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The power throttling framework automatically categorizes every app you are running and effectively squeezes the life out of non-essential background applications. Doing so limits the amount of CPU resources these apps can access and should improve your battery life.

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According to Microsoft’s internal tests, power throttling can potentially reduce CPU power consumption by about 11 percent during strenuous use cases. It remains to be seen, though, whether or not everyday users will experience those kinds of gains on a regular basis — or if those numbers are just the best-case scenario from Microsoft’s internal tests.

Like most Insider builds, Build 16179 comes with a robust catalog of bugfixes, adjustments, and minor features. First among which is a new feature for virtual machine users, which Microsoft is calling Revert VM. Ultimately, it creates a checkpoint every time a virtual machine is started, allowing users to restore to the last boot to undo any mistakes.

Additionally, desktop icons will no longer wander around all on their own. Microsoft patched a bug which was causing some users’ desktop icons to move around unexpectedly when “Auto-arrange icons” was enabled. Microsoft also fixed a bug which was causing Hindi language users to experience crashes every time they attempted to launch Microsoft Edge.

As always, you can browse the full details of every new feature, tweak, and minor bugfix in Build 16179 on the Windows Insider blog.

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Jayce Wagner
Jayce Wagner
Former Digital Trends Contributor
A staff writer for the Computing section, Jayce covers a little bit of everything -- hardware, gaming, and occasionally VR.
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