Microsoft announces Windows 10 version 21H1 officially

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Microsoft announced the next feature update for its Windows 10 operating system, version 21H1, today officially on the Windows Experience blog.

John Cable, Vice President, Program Management, Windows Servicing and Delivery, confirmed in the announcement that the next feature update will be very similar to the current one, Windows 10 version 20H2.

The update "will be delivered in an optimized way using servicing technology". Essentially, what that means is that the update will install like any other cumulative update released for Windows 10, and not like a major update release that require more time and processing.

Windows 10 devices running the last two feature update versions, 2004 and 20H2, will benefit from this the most. Earlier versions of Windows 10 on the other hand still require an extended updating process because of the changes implemented in Windows 10 version 2004 and beyond.

Microsoft pushed the update to the Beta channel of the Windows Insiders program today for further testing, but only for seekers, i.e. administrators that click on the check for updates button under Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update.

As far as changes are concerned, Windows 10 version 21H1 will be a smaller update as we suggested already back in November 2020. It appears that Microsoft is indeed switching the two feature update releases of the year by moving the smaller one to the first half of the year and the larger update to the second half.

Cable highlights a few areas with improvements and notes that the release is optimize to support the "most pressing needs" of Microsoft's customers.
 

New features include multicamera support for Windows Hello and security related performance improvements.

• Windows Hello multicamera support to set the default as the external camera when both external and internal Windows Hello cameras are present.
  
• Windows Defender Application Guard performance improvements including optimizing document opening scenario times.
  
• Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) Group Policy Service (GPSVC) updating performance improvement to support remote work scenarios.
  

The new feature update for Windows 10 will be released to the Release Preview ring, another Insider channel, before general availability to stable versions of the operating system.

Microsoft has yet to reveal the release date for the upcoming feature update for Windows 10.

Now You: are you looking forward to the feature update release?
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