When was the last time you watched a full-screen video on your Windows 10 laptop or PC? Was it interrupted by notification pop-ups? Thankfully, Microsoft knows about it, and the next Windows 10 update will automatically detect that you’re watching a full-screen video and hide notifications.
What We Know About the New Feature
The new feature will be deployed in Windows 10’s Focus Assist.
What is Focus Assist on Windows 10?
In case you don’t already know, Focus Assist has been part of Windows 10 since the April 2018 update. It’s a functionality that lets you enable the “do not disturb” mode so you can hide notifications. That will be automated in the next Windows 10 update. Right now, you have to configure Focus Assist to hide notifications every time you want to watch a full-screen video. The automated functionality will instead let you set it up once, and it will automatically detect any full-screen video. It will hide notifications for you every time. And it works on different video formats.
Any full-screen app will trigger the activation of Focus Assist. It can be a desktop video player like Windows Media Player or VLC. It also works with in-browser video players or streaming sites like Netflix and YouTube.
When to Expect It
The new feature will be included in the 19H1 Windows update. That means waiting until April 2019. Fortunately, if you have the Insider build 18277, you don’t have to wait for that update. The November 7 th release has the new Focus Assist capability.
How It Will Work
More than just full-screen videos will activate the new Focus Assist feature.
Various operations will do that, including:
- projecting your display
- playing full-screen games
- working between specific hours
However, that doesn’t mean you won’t get your notifications. Essentially, your notifications will only be hidden – not blocked. That means you’ll still get them after Focus Assist is disabled when you don’t have any full-screen app. Once you stop the full-screen app, you’ll get a summary of your notifications.
How to Use the New Feature
The new feature will be placed within the Focus Assist settings. That makes it easy to find and use.
If you want to hide notifications automatically, here’s
how to enable the Focus Assist feature
in Windows 10 19H1:
- Go to Settings > System > Focus Assist
- Within the Focus Assist settings, you’ll find the option “When I’m using an app in full-screen mode.” Select that option.
Having set it up once, you won’t need to do so every time you open a full-screen app. The feature will recognize any full-screen app and automatically hide notifications. You’ll then enjoy uninterrupted video watching and game playing. That’s a one-click solution to solve the problem of irritating notifications. It’s a great software design that reduces your workload. Just like Auslogics Driver Updater’s one-click solution that prevents device conflicts and ensures smooth hardware operation.
How to Use Play Mode While Watching Videos
In case you have urgent notifications you want to see even when watching full-screen videos, you can customize Focus Assist to the “Priority only” mode. This will allow the configuration of priority applications.
You can then continue getting notifications from the top-priority applications even when watching full-screen videos.
Other Features of the Latest Insider Preview Build
The latest Insider preview build has not only that extra Focus Assist feature but also several other useful aspects. It makes screen display adjustment more intuitive. Before, you had to use the brightness toggle tile to adjust screen display brightness. It didn’t give the best user experience. Thankfully, the latest Insider preview build replaces that with a slide bar. Certainly gives you a feeling of greater control.
Other display issues are covered too.
Based on the same concept of hands-off, automatic adjustment, the Insider preview build adjusts app display by default. It has a default called “Let Windows try to fix apps, so they’re not blurry.” It will automatically fix blurry apps when your screen display DPI settings change.
There’s one more feature aimed at making Windows easy to use. If you want to customize Microsoft’s locked-down browser environment, you’ll no longer have to dig through Group Policy. You’ll now easily do that through Windows Defender.
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