When Microsoft launched Windows 10 last year, the company made no secret of its intention to unite the PC user base under one version of the operating system. The idea was to get users to make the jump to Windows 10, so that automatic updates would ensure that they would be kept up to date for the foreseeable future.
However, automatic updates aren’t particularly user friendly in many cases. It can be frustrating to find that your PC has started the update process when you need to use it, and completely infuriating to find that a newly released update has broken certain functionality, even if the outage is brief.
Now, it seems that Microsoft is preparing to give users a modicum of control over automatic updates to their system. It will soon be possible to pause updates from the Windows Update app, preventing them from being installed.
However, there’s a bit of a caveat to this functionality, as users won’t be able to delay the installation of updates indefinitely, according to a report from MS Power User. Instead, they’ll be able to out them off for a maximum of 35 days, which should be long enough for any instability concerns to be taken care of. Certain updates, like security patches issued via Windows Defender, will continue to be installed as normal even when this option is enabled.
The build that this feature was spotted in comes from the Enterprise version of Windows 10, so it’s currently unknown whether Home and Pro versions of the operating system will also be able to delay updates.
The option to delay updates is expected to be introduced to Windows 10 as part of the Creators Update that’s scheduled for early 2017. Members of the Insider program will likely be given access to this functionality ahead of time.
