Microsoft’s getting ready to release another feature update for Windows 10. This one’s a minor update, with just a handful of changes. Here’s what you can expect.

 

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

That’s the sound of Microsoft’s update servers, counting down to the public release of Windows 10 version 20H2, aka the October 2020 Update.

It’s also an accurate description of the new release cadence for Windows 10, with each tick representing a major release in the first half of the year and the tock marking the release of a minor update in the second half of the year.

That’s what happened in 2019, when Microsoft released version 1909 as a small “enablement package” that took only a few minutes to download and install on systems that were already running version 1903.

Version 20H2 is following the exact same playbook. Just as it did with last year’s second-half release, Microsoft announced months in advance that the October 2020 Update would “offer a scoped set of features to improve performance and enhance quality.” If you’re not up on your Microsoft jargon, allow me to translate: There are very few new features in this update.

 

It will be available as an optional update, meaning you’ll have to explicitly choose to download and install the 20H2 update unless your device has reached the end of support for your current Windows 10 version.

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The 20H2 update is optional for most Windows 10 users.

The most obvious change, of course, is the name of the release. The previous “version yymm” naming convention resulted in 2020’s first release appearing as though it had been released 16 years ago, in 2004. Had Microsoft stuck to the same naming convention, the H2 version number would have been either 2009 or 2010. So, instead, the company changed the way it labels new feature updates to use H1 and H2 where the month number used to be.

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