An examination of the leaked 18950 Windows 10 build indicates that users will soon be able to reinstall the OS from the cloud. Reputable Microsoft sleuth WalkingCat spotted the changes and posted it to Twitter with the following strings:
“How would you like to reinstall Windows? > Cloud download: Download Windows. >Reset locally: Reinstall my existing Windows operation system.”
According to WalkingCat, this test can be seen in the BootUX, or the menu you see when looking at the OS’ advanced boot options. At this point, how exactly the system would work is unclear. Assumedly, cloud download installs the latest version from Microsoft’s servers, while local re-install the current OS.
As 18950 is a leaked build, the public isn’t able to test this feature just yet. The latest Insider build is 18945, though, so we may see this soon.
As How-to Geek notes, this cloud restore feature could bear similarities to macOS’ Time Machine, which lets users download a fresh version of the OS while automatically restoring cloud backups for documents, pictures, and system files.
While cloud restore isn’t a massive addition for the average user, it could be extremely helpful for Windows Insiders. Once you embark on a test build, moving back to the public version often requires manually downloading an iso, creating backups, and re-configuring. Microsoft’s new option could take care of that automatically.
Meanwhile, Windows Central’s Zack Bowden believes that this feature will make an appearance in Windows Core OS. This is expected to be a trimmed-down OS that, like ChromeOS, users probably won’t be able to easily flash builds manually.
