Losing a favorite pen is a writer's worst nightmare, especially if it was expensive. But now that digital pens are becoming more ubiquitous as a way to interact with touch screen Windows PCs, Microsoft has come up with an ingenious method for helping you find ones that may have gone astray.
Unveiled with the latest Windows 10 Insider Preview on Friday, the "find my pen" feature works by recording the location of your PC or tablet each time you use a pen to write on it. If you lose your pen, you can navigate to Settings > Update & Security > Find My Device, which will tell you the last time you used your pen, as well as offer a map of your device's approximate location when you used it.
"The pen doesn't have a GPS, so we can't help you there, but what we *can* do is tell you where you were when you last inked on your computer," Windows engineer Dona Sarkar wrote in a blog post.
Once you find it again, you'll be able to take advantage of numerous improvements to the way Windows handles pen-based inputs in the latest Insider build. They include a redesigned handwriting panel that floats on top of apps and senses when you've filled it with words, sliding the text over to the left so you have room to continue writing.
There are also new gestures for correcting typos, including the ability to join and split words (so you can go back and forth on whether "touch screen" is one word or two) and change a single letter by writing over it instead of choosing from a suggested alternate. Finally, you can now use the pen to scroll as a substitute for your finger, which saves you from the hassle of putting down your pen or hunting for a scroll bar.
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The Windows on-screen keyboard gets some love too, with a new single-handed mode for tablets that lets you move your hand or pen over several keys in a single gesture, a process Microsoft refers to as "shape writing." If you'd rather dictate, the keyboard now also includes a microphone icon that prompts your computer to listen for and transcribe your musings in English or Chinese.
While the latest Insider build gives writers a lot to look forward to, they're not the only group of users Microsoft is trying to please. You'll also find numerous improvements to the Edge web browser, including a new full screen view and the return of the ability to pin websites to the Windows taskbar, and a smarter Cortana digital assistant, with oddly specific new features like the ability to add calendar events based on advertisements that you save to your calendar roll.
For a full list of what you can explore in the latest Windows Insider build, check out Microsoft's blog post.
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