On May 18th, 2021, Microsoft released Windows 10, version 21H1 build 19043. This Windows version introduces ten new Group Policy settings.

New Group Policy Settings

Windows 10, version 21H1, build 19043 introduces the following new Group Policy settings:

Enable news and interests on the taskbar

This computer Group Policy setting specifies whether news and interests are shown on the taskbar.

This Group Policy setting can be found under Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, News and interests.

Remove the Meet Now icon

This Group Policy setting allows admins to remove the Meet Now icon from the system control area. If an admin enables this Group Policy setting for a user in scope, the Meet Now icon is not displayed in the system notification area.

If an admin disables or does not configure this Group Policy setting, the Meet Now icon is displayed in the system notification area.

This Group Policy setting can be found under User Configuration, Administrative Templates, Start Menu and Taskbar.

Disable safeguards for Feature Updates

An admin can enable this Group Policy setting when Feature Updates should be deployed to devices without blocking on any safeguard holds. Safeguard holds are known compatibility issues that block the upgrade from being deployed to affected devices until the issue is resolved. 

Enabling this Group Policy setting allows an organization to deploy Windows Feature Updates to devices for testing, or to deploy Feature Updates without blocking on safeguard holds.

This Group Policy setting can be found under Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Windows Update and Windows Update for Business.

Allow "Save Target As" in Internet Explorer mode

This Group Policy setting allows admins to enable the Save Target As context menu in Internet Explorer mode.

If an admin enables this Group Policy setting for either a device or a user in scope, Save Target As will show up in the Internet Explorer mode context menu and work the same as Internet Explorer. If an admin disables or does not configure this Group Policy setting, Save Target As will not show up in the Internet Explorer mode context menu. More information.

This Group Policy setting can be found under Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Internet Explorer. under both Computer Configuration and User Configuration,

Enable extended hot keys in Internet Explorer mode

This Group Policy setting lets admins enable extended Microsoft Edge Internet Explorer mode hotkeys, such as Ctrl+S to have Save as functionality.

If an admin enables this Group Policy setting for either a device or a user in scope, extended hotkey functionality is enabled in Internet Explorer mode and work the same as Internet Explorer. If an admin disables, or doesn't configure this Group Policy setting, extended hotkeys will not work in Internet Explorer mode. More information.

This Group Policy setting can be found under Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Internet Explorer. under both Computer Configuration and User Configuration,

Disable Internet Explorer 11 as a standalone browser

This Group Policy setting lets admins restrict launching of Internet Explorer as a standalone browser.

If an admin enables this Group Policy setting for either a device or a user in scope, it:

• Prevents Internet Explorer 11 from launching as a standalone browser.
• Restricts Internet Explorer's usage to Microsoft Edge's native 'Internet Explorer mode'.
• Redirects all attempts at launching Internet Explorer 11 to Microsoft Edge Stable Channel browser.
• Overrides any other policies that redirect to Internet Explorer 11.

If an admin disables, or doesn’t configure this Group Policy setting, all sites are opened using the current active browser settings.

Note:
Microsoft Edge Stable Channel must be installed for this policy to take effect.

This Group Policy setting can be found under Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Internet Explorer. under both Computer Configuration and User Configuration,

Suppress the display of Edge Deprecation Notification

Admins can configure Microsoft Edge to suppress the display of the notification that informs users that support of the ‘Spartan’ version of Microsoft Edge ended on March 9th, 2021.

If an admin enables this Group Policy setting for either a device or a user in scope, the notification will not show. If disabled or not configured, the notification will show every time the Edge ‘Spartan’ browser is launched.

This Group Policy setting can be found under Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Microsoft Edge. under both Computer Configuration and User Configuration,

Select OCR language

This Group Policy setting allows selection of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) language.

If an admin enables this Group Policy setting for a device in scope, the selected OCR language is used in OCR processing during the indexing of TIFF files. If an admin disables or doesn’t configure this Group Policy setting, the default system language is used.

Note:
Re-indexing is not initiated when you enable this policy and select the OCR language. This policy setting only applies to indexing of new files, unless re-indexing is initiated manually.

This Group Policy setting can be found under Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, Search, OCR.

Select OCR language from a code page

This Group Policy setting allows selecting of OCR (Optical Character Recognition) languages that belong to one of the supported code pages.

If an admin enables this Group Policy setting for a device in scope, the selected OCR languages are used in OCR processing during the indexing of TIFF files. The default system language is ignored unless it is among the selected OCR languages. If an admin disables or doesn’t configure this Group Policy setting, only the default system language is used.

Note:
All selected OCR languages must belong to the same code page. If languages from more than one code page are selected, the entire OCR language selection is ignored and only the default system language is used.

Note:
Re-indexing is not initiated when you enable this policy and select the OCR language. This policy setting only applies to indexing of new files, unless re-indexing is initiated manually.

This Group Policy setting can be found under Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, Search, OCR.

Force TIFF IFilter to perform OCR for every page in a TIFF document

This Group Policy setting lets admins turn off the performance optimization on a device in scope, so that the TIFF IFilter will perform OCR for every page in a TIFF document, which allows indexing of all recognized text.

By default, the TIFF IFilter optimizes its performance by skipping Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for document pages that have non-textual content. In some cases, pages that contain text can be misclassified as non-text pages. If this is the case, the text in these pages will not be indexed.

If an admin enables this Group Policy setting on a device in scope, TIFF IFilter will perform OCR for every page in a TIFF document to index all recognized text. Therefore, the OCR process will be slower. This decrease in performance can be significant if there are lots of non-textual pages (pictures) in TIFF documents on the system.

If an admin disables or doesn’t configure this Group Policy setting, TIFF IFilter will optimize its performance by skipping non-textual content during the OCR process.

This Group Policy setting can be found under Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, Search, OCR.