You Can Now Download The Windows 10 Creators Update

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The wait is over: You can now download the Windows 10 Creators Update via the Windows 10 Update Assistant.

Microsoft is set to release the Creators Update to all users on April 11. However, you can install the update now if you want to stay a little ahead of the curve. All you have to do is head to Microsoft's website, click the "Update now" button, and run the Windows 10 Update Assistant after it downloads. It should then check for updates and let you know that Build 15063--the official build number for the Creators Update--is now available to install.

We're about to install the Creators Update ourselves to learn more about what's been added to the operating system, what's changed, and what remains the same, for better or worse. We do know that we have a few things to look forward to: a Game Mode that promises to boost performance, Beam live-streaming from the Game Bar, a picture-in-picture mode for streaming videos while pretending to work, and improved privacy settings.

Other changes include improved performance and security for the Microsoft Edge web browser, a night light mode that reduces blue light emissions, and the ability to lock your PC via Windows Hello on your smartphone. Microsoft also included a new 3D Paint app that seems poised to compete with Blender, the popular freeware tool used for 3D graphics and animation. There's also improved support for Windows Mixed Reality-compatible products.

Nathaniel Mott
Nathaniel Mott
Freelance News & Features Writer

Nathaniel Mott is a freelance news and features writer for Tom's Hardware US, covering breaking news, security, and the silliest aspects of the tech industry.

52 Comments Comment from the forums
  • dstarr3
    "Improved" privacy settings. Yes, I'm sure MS will benefit greatly from their improvements. Let me know when they finally make some changes for the benefit of the consumer instead.
    Reply
  • Paul NZ
    Mediacreation tool has also been updated, so you can get the Creators ISO as well
    Reply
  • Jsimenhoff
    "A picture-in-picture mode for streaming videos while pretending to work"

    I definitely, 100%, will not be using this feature at work. *whistles innocently*
    Reply
  • Clovis-559
    Anyone tried the Atmos setup yet?
    Reply
  • clonazepam
    Feeling brave... running the update right now without a data backup.
    Reply
  • sonichedgehog360
    Even better, if you are on a non-Windows machine or use a user-agent switcher browser plug-in, you can now download the final Creators Update ISOs at this official link:

    https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10ISO
    Reply
  • Paul NZ
    Which is what I said
    Reply
  • USAFRet
    This is why I keep a spare test laptop around.
    Running it now.
    Reply
  • sonichedgehog360
    Except these are the actual official ISO images and not created on your machine with the ESDs the Media Creation tool. :)
    Reply
  • alextheblue
    Install went smooth, everything working fine. Gonna use Edge for a while. These days I only really use Edge and FF at home and Chrome at work (Win7 boxes). I used to run Opera, especially before they switched to Chromium. Not sure if Edge is ready for full-time use but it's working surprisingly well so far even with default settings.

    There's a few big improvements to Edge. The big one: it blocks a lot of Flash content by default now. You can unblock Flash content on a per-site basis "Once" or "Always" if you need it. It's a couple of mouseclicks away with an icon in the upper right. You can still of course disable Flash altogether with a few clicks (advanced settings), but so far the default mode strikes a good balance. I'm running TH (almost left that as THG, old habits die hard) and AT with Adguard disabled, but I still enable Adguard for sites that are unknown to me, super abusive, or I otherwise don't trust.

    They also added the ability to set tabs aside for later. This is obviously not a cutting-edge feature, but it's good to see it in the pack-in default browser. I won't fault them for adding useful features, even if they aren't the first to do so. I'll leave that to someone that still types M$ like it's cool 20 years later. The last major change to Edge I care about is the "show tab previews" arrow. It appears just to the right of the new tab button, and just like it says it shows a preview image of all current tabs. It's like mousing over the tab preview, but for all tabs at once. Also not revolutionary, but it's handy to have.

    The rest of the changes probably won't affect me much personally, outside of Game Mode. But I figure Game Mode is going to see a lot of coverage so I'm not going to bother fiddling with it right now. Also it require game support, which hopefully we will see for more and more titles. I suspect it will primarily affect the number and severity of hiccups (minimum FPS) on humble spec'd PCs, but I don't think it will impact average/peak FPS much if any. At any rate, it's nice to see them doing something like this - it's a free boost for rigs with older/cheaper processors that don't have threads to spare. It's really good of them to offer, and if you don't want to use it, just ignore it. For those who absolutely do not want anything to do with it (even though it doesn't hurt anything by existing and you can safely ignore it), please just disable everything and don't rampage internet forums screaming about an optional feature. Thanks. I love you all.
    Reply