14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has a thing for new icons in Windows 10, and although the company doesn’t always get it right, the Windows Insider program allows it to experiment with all kinds of new designs.
This is exactly what’s happening right now with the File Explorer icon, as the recently launched Windows 10 build 14352 comes with a new design that adds a little bit more color.
In the previous build, Microsoft introduced a monochrome File Explorer icon that was heavily criticized by insiders, so the company has decided to give it another shot and implement a design that uses more colors. Right now, the new File Explorer icon that could launch with Redstone is very similar to the current one in the stable builds of Windows 10, minus the shadow and a few other small touches here and there.
Truth be told, users like consistency, and changing the icon could actually create more confusion for some. Also in the recent preview builds, Microsoft unpinned the File Explorer icon from the taskbar, another move that was quickly criticized by insiders.
Still no sign of tabs
And although Microsoft is tweaking the icon with almost every new build, there’s another feature that users would love to get with the Redstone update: tab support.
Tab support in File Explorer is one of the most requested features, but for the moment, Microsoft doesn’t seem to be ready to implement it with the summer update. There were suggestions that tabs were being developed at Microsoft, but the moment, it looks like this feature will skip the Anniversary Update as well.
Right now, the majority of powerful third-party file managers out there come with tab support, so it’s hard to understand how come Microsoft isn’t introducing such a feature for its own app. If the Anniversary Update doesn’t bring it, the next chance to get such a feature is the second wave of the Redstone update coming in early 2017.
