The effective death of Windows 10 – in terms of feature updates being completely halted – may have been announced prematurely, as it seems Microsoft will still be tweaking and adding some capabilities to the OS, albeit only in a (very) minor capacity.
This is according to a Ghacks (opens in new tab) report that point outs a new Windows 10 build hitting the Release Preview channel, and guess what? There are some new features in that build (version 19045.3030).
This means that once tested in that preview channel, those features – which comprise of tweaks (opens in new tab) to the search box in the taskbar, and also minor changes to toast notifications – will be arriving for the full version of Windows 10 soon.
So, it seems while Microsoft will not be pushing out any major updates for Windows 10 – so there’ll be no 23H2 upgrade and no ‘Moment’ style feature drops for the OS – what might happen is that some minor features are going to pitch up from time to time in cumulative monthly updates.
Or at least it looks that way – let’s dig into this a bit more.
Analysis: Reading between the lines
It’s possible that this is one last hurrah, perhaps. A final feature tweak (or two, rather) that Microsoft has chucked in because it was the last piece of work those software engineers still beavering away on Windows 10 had finished off.
We simply don’t know for sure, and certainly, there’s no guarantee that small feature additions will be an ongoing thing. They may happen in some months, though, we shall just have to see.
If we look at what Microsoft announced at the end of April regarding the freeze on Windows 10 features (via the Windows Update Twitter account), the statement read: “Windows 10, version 22H2 will be the final version of Windows 10 released. It will receive monthly security update releases until October 14, 2025.”
To us, that very much implies that monthly security updates will be the only thing piped to Windows 10 from now until October 2025. However, it doesn’t expressly say there’ll be no features including minor tweaks – just that there won’t be a 23H2 version (or other big updates).
Looking at the new Release Preview build, it’s mostly a whole lot of bug squashing, with those two minor feature tweaks on top (though the search bar stuff is worth having).
So, the reality seems to be that it’ll mostly be security fixes going forward, but maybe with the occasional adjustment or slightly bigger change on the feature front – but nothing to get excited about.
Which in fairness makes the whole previous announcement easier to swallow. Our main complaint was Microsoft seemingly wanting to not even make minor tweaks to Windows 10, and it appears the firm will carry on some work on this front – maybe, anyway.
Time will tell, but for now, we think Windows 10 users can at least take some solace in this latest development. Even if the OS is definitely not going to see anything much done to it over the next couple of years of its remaining road before Microsoft pulls the rug for support.
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