Windows 8’s excellent new file transfer HUD

Today Microsoft unveiled a new feature in Windows 8: smarter file transferring.

While it is in and of itself a small change, it is one that users will interact with again and again over the life of their PC running Windows 8. This gives it has the potential to be impactful and, at the same time, elegant. GeekWire has a similar take: “It’s not the type of thing that will get people to line up around the corner, but it suggests an attention to detail that bodes well for Windows 8 overall.”

Instead of the former mess of different popup windows showing various file transfers, and their endless announcements that a transferring file has a name that is the same as a destination file, in Windows 8 a single, unified pane contains all file transfers, and a simple interface details with naming issues.

It looks like this:

And with two transfers paused:

The following image shows how naming conflicts are resolved:

And there you have it, the new file transfer setup in Windows 8. Let’s hope that Microsoft continues to reveal such bits of the coming operating system in the time leading up to BUILD. You can read all our Windows 8 coverage here.