• Windows 10 will not receive anymore feature updates.
• While Microsoft will continue to ship security updates, Windows 11 is where users will have to go for any new features.
• Windows 10’s end of life is slated for 14th October 2025 at which point the OS won’t receive security updates either.

Microsoft really wants folks to switch to Windows 11 and to encourage the transition, the firm is stopping work on the operating system.

The end of life for Windows 10 is currently slated for 14th October 2025 and despite that deadline being over two years out, Microsoft said last week that it would stop releasing feature updates for Windows 10.

“As documented on the Windows 10 Enterprise and Education and Windows 10 Home and Pro lifecycle pages, Windows 10 will reach end of support on October 14, 2025. The current version, 22H2, will be the final version of Windows 10, and all editions will remain in support with monthly security update releases through that date,” member of the Windows Servicing and Delivery team, Jason Leznek wrote in a blog post.

“We highly encourage you to transition to Windows 11 now as there won’t be any additional Windows 10 feature updates,” Leznek said.

The good news, for Microsoft at least, is that the take up of Windows 11 is improving. In January 2022, Windows 11 only made up 2.6 percent of Windows desktop installations. As of April, Windows 11 made up 23.01 percent of all Windows installations globally.

That’s an impressive feat but moving existing users over to Windows 11 isn’t as easy as moving folks over to Windows 10 was. While users can upgrade to Windows 11 for free, their hardware needs to meet the minimum requirements which includes a TPM 2.0 chip. While most modern hardware should sport this chip, older hardware may not.

There’s also not all that much to get excited about regarding Windows 11. One of the marquee features, the ability to run Android apps natively, is still MIA and while integration with ChatGPT is nice, it’s not something everybody wants or needs.

To be clear, Windows apps on Windows 10 will continue to receive updates it’s just the operating system itself that won’t receive any new feature

Granted, there are security improvements, some of the user interface updates are nice and things are a bit more intuitive. Whether Windows 11 will prove to be alluring enough for a majority of users to migrate before the end of 2025 will be interesting to see, especially when some of those users will need to spend money on a new PC.