- Windows 11’s July Update has arrived
- It packs some nifty features, including pausing updates and a new restore option
- This patch also cures a nasty bug that slowly eats up more and more drive space, but there is one issue to be aware of for Dell laptop owners
Microsoft has released its monthly patch for Windows 11, and the July update is a biggie, and it includes a feature that I’ve been waiting for for a while.
That would be the ability to pause updates on Windows 11 Home – beyond just a short period of time, which has been the only choice to date – and there are some other impressive additions from Microsoft here.
I’ll pick out my top four features introduced by the July update, as well as round up some of the other more notable changes here. I’ll also highlight an important bugfix that’s been implemented for a nasty bug that eats up your drive space—along with a warning to some of those with a Dell laptop (who might not be getting this update for good reason, as you’ll see).
As always, these changes were seen in the last optional update (June Preview) and most of these features are rolling out gradually, so you won’t see them immediately after installing this update (you’ll actually have to wait a while based on how the update blows in terms of your exact PC configuration).
1. Pause updates
Sometimes you want to put off installing an update because of a bug that you’re worried about potentially affecting your system, and until now Windows 11 users have only been able to avoid a given update for five weeks.
Okay, so that’s quite a long time, but what if the bug is one of those persistent and glaring issues that Microsoft takes a long time to fix? You might want to delay the update beyond five weeks, and now you can. The catch is that you have to continuously renew the delay for every 35-day period, but nevertheless, you can now keep an update at a distance for as long as you want. (Well – until you’re forced to update to a new version of Windows 11, that is, when support runs out for your current version).
2. Point-in-time recovery
Another smart addition is point-in-time recovery, a new recovery option that you can use when something bad happens to your PC and you can no longer reach the desktop. Point-in-time recovery allows you to roll back a non-working system to a previous working state. It returns to “full system state”, which means all your apps, files and settings are restored as recorded at the previous time.
Hopefully this is a feature you’ll never need, but if you do, you’ll be very happy with it. Note that the system backups naturally take up drive space, with older backups automatically deleted after 72 hours by default. Also, if you have a system drive smaller than 200GB, you will need to enable this feature yourself (as it is not enabled automatically due to potential space issues – note that you can specify the maximum amount of storage space used).
The July update makes the widget panel ‘quiet’, which Microsoft believes has cut out a lot of clutter. The main change is that by default the panel just shows your widgets, and Microsoft has gotten rid of the advertising nonsense in terms of ads and the MSN feed. Notifications and taskbar icons are also minimized by default, and widgets no longer open when hovering over them.
There are some other streamlining moves here, and even if you don’t use widgets, I think it’s a notable change as it shows the direction Microsoft is now heading with Windows 11 – relaxing the upsell it previously promised (if not banishing it entirely).
4. Screen color
Windows 11 has been graced with a number of accessibility improvements in the July update, the first of which is a new screen color capability. This does what it says on the tin, allowing you to tint the screen with a selection of colors to reduce eye strain or to make text easier to read. You can adjust the color intensity, and this is a very useful addition that will save people from downloading a third-party app to get these kinds of color overlays.
Other features in the July update
There’s quite a bit going on here aside from the big moves mentioned above, and that includes Microsoft increasing the speed at which File Explorer launches (helping Windows 11 feel more performant overall).
There’s also a lot of work on the Bluetooth front, as Microsoft notes: “This update improves reliability and performance when connecting to and using Bluetooth devices.” It includes better driver stability, improved audio routing for calls via Phone Link, and more.
File Explorer has also been tweaked to be more reliable, and Microsoft has implemented a performance tweak to the Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) that means PCs shut down faster. If you’ve ever sat staring at your computer as it takes 20 seconds to shut down, wondering what on earth it’s doing, hopefully that kind of behavior will be a less frequent occurrence in the future.
A big bug fix – and Dell laptop problems
There’s some good news for those of you who have suffered a mysterious error eating up storage space (due to an out-of-control database file). This is fixed with the July update (the cure was in the June preview before that) so you can grab this to fix the problem (hopefully).
However, there is some bad news on the bug front, namely that you won’t get this update on some Dell devices with Intel CPUs, as Microsoft has blocked it due to the July patch causing all sorts of weird problems. I say it’s bad news, but at least Microsoft caught the problem and has prevented the update from being sent to these machines.
Microsoft informs us: “This update may not be available for a limited number of Dell devices with Intel processors due to an incompatibility reported by Dell that could potentially cause unexpected shutdowns, poor performance, increased heat and battery drain. We are working with Dell to prevent affected models from experiencing the issue and plan to release a fix for affected devices in the coming days.”
So if you were wondering why you couldn’t get this patch on your Dell laptop, now you know. You’ll just have to be stuck until Microsoft and Dell get it fixed.
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