- Microsoft previously promised that it would allow users to pause Windows 11 updates for as long as needed
- The first work towards that end has been discovered hidden in a preview build
- It’s still early days, but it’s a hopeful sign that this will be in testing soon
As part of its campaign to fix Windows 11, one of Microsoft’s most important promises to me was to give users more control over Windows updates — and it’s now clear that this functionality will arrive sooner rather than later.
Neowin discovered that regular Windows 11 leaker PhantomOfEarth posted on X to highlight a change with the ability to pause updates to the OS found lurking in the background (and enabled using a Windows configuration tool).
There is now a button that pops up in a calendar view so you can set a date until which updates will be stopped. Once that day is reached, updates will resume again, although as PhantomOfEarth notes, the limited availability of dates should be ignored at the moment as this work is still in the very early stages.
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The feature isn’t even officially out for testing yet, and is hidden in the latest preview build that arrived in the Dev channel (though it’s likely in the Beta channel as well, the leaker notes).
What this does show, however, is that the move is being put into action, and we can hope that we might see the option to pause updates in testing Windows 11 perhaps this month or in May.
Analysis: here’s why this ability is so valuable
Pavan Davuluril, who heads the Windows and Devices group at Microsoft, previously promised that in the future you’ll be able to pause Windows 11 updates for as long as needed.
So this seems to be the first step towards that goal, with the calendar presumably allowing you to choose any date you want and how long you want to pause updates. Well, unless there’s some sort of ‘as long as you need’ time limit. (And I bet it will, but it will probably be a longer period of a year or so, or at least six months – of course, you can’t and shouldn’t keep updating Windows 11 forever).
If you’re thinking: why would you want to delay applying an update? Well, it’s true that Windows 11’s monthly updates have security fixes that, in an ideal world, should be applied quickly (since any vulnerability that is fixed is publicly known by then and more likely to be exploited). However, these cumulative updates also have bugs in them, as we’ve seen all too often in the past with Windows 11.
A scenario could be that e.g. owners of a particular GPU, or perhaps processor, are having serious issues with an update, and problems are being reported across social media. Imagine if some of these reports include PCs that won’t boot after the update. Now, in this case, you probably don’t want to run the risk of your system completely crashing in a nasty way like this, so you’ll want to hold off on the update.
Right now, you can pause updates on Windows 11 Home, but only for five weeks. You can go further with Windows 11 Pro (although doing so via the Group Policy Editor is a bit cumbersome), and you may also want to do this on the home version of the OS if a problem is still being reported persistently. Microsoft will give those of us on Windows 11 Home that option and make it easy – and rightly so, because if you’re nervous about an update for any reason, you should be able to pause as long as you want.
Of course, as mentioned, there is still a balance to be struck between pausing a worrisome update and not going also long without important security fixes, but that is a choice the user must make based on their assessment of the perceived risks. We shouldn’t be forced to install an update after a month of waiting just because Microsoft says so.
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