Windows 10 Preview Build 17623 from RS5 branch is now available to insiders in the Skip Ahead

If you are a Windows Insider in the Fast Ring, and opted in to Skip Ahead, Microsoft has aired a new build for you with new features, changes and a set of fixes. Windows 10 Insiders Preview Build 17623 for PC is now available.

This build focuses on High Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF), External GPU Safe Remove Experience and Windows Defender Application Guard (WDAG) improvements.

What's new in Windows 10 preview build 17623?

• With the build 17623, Microsoft has introduced a new image format, named High Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF), which is an image container that leverages modern codecs like HEVC to improve quality, compression, and capabilities compared to earlier formats like JPEG, GIF, and PNG. In addition to traditional single images, HEIF supports encoding image sequences, image collections, auxiliary images like alpha or depth maps, live images & video, audio, and HDR for greater contrast. To try the HEIF format on Windows 10, you need to join the Windows App Preview Program and install the latest version of the Photos app.
• Along with this build, Microsoft also introduced a safe remove experience for external GPUs connected via Thunderbolt 3. The safe remove experience allows you to know which applications are running on an external GPU so that you can safely remove to prevent data loss during detach.
• With this build, Microsoft also added new improvements to the Windows Defender Application Guard (WDAG), which includes performance improvements and an ability to download files from within WDAG.

To know more about these features and improvements, checkout the original release notes published by Microsoft. It also includes the list of fixes part of this build and the known issues. Check them out before downloading the latest update.