The Hot Take: Nice to see MS wanting stability over features.
I expect Windows 11 26H2 to ship in October 2026 as an enablement package. Based on past trends, itâll roll out sometime between the last week of September and the last week of October. Windows 11 25H2 shipped in the last week of September, but versions 24H2 and 23H2 were released in October of their respective years.
But is there anything new in this yearâs annual update? Iâd say nothing major in particular.
Windows 11 26H2 is the annual feature update for the operating system, but it doesnât come with anything exciting. If youâve readâŚ
The Hot Take: Sorry I prefer privacy on my own cloud. GTFOH.
As Windows Latest first reported, Microsoft is quietly installing âOneDrive Photosâ on PCs, and our tests show that itâs tied to the OneDrive sync client, which is already pre-installed on Windows. Initially, I assumed that only consumers would be getting the app, but it turns out that itâs being pushed to enterprise customers as well.
Windows Latest spoke to IT admins and found that Microsoft is forcing the OneDrive Photos app onto enterprise PCs, including those that use Microsoft Intune. Worse, OneDrive Photos works only with a personalâŚ
Microsoft released Windows NT 4.0 to manufacturing partners on July 31, 1996. Codename Cairo marked an important milestone in the history of Microsoftâs original server OS and would far outlive Microsoftâs original plans as enthusiasts and administrators clung to it, as older readers will be aware. Headlining features of NT 4.0, which made it a winner, include the melding of the intuitive new Windows 95 UI into the fully 32-bit enterprise OS. It was also notable for being the last version of NT to support Alpha, MIPS, or PowerPC CPUâŚ
The Hot Take: Just deeper and deeper into our lives.... I dropped OneDrive because the "backup" nag screens. Thankfully I have Synology NAS with Drive client to replace it.
The year is 2026, and Iâm still amazed when I find a new entry in my Start menuâs All apps list for an app I donât remember installing. This time, itâs Microsoft again, and the product is OneDrive Photos, which appears to be yet another photo editor and viewer for Windows 11 that nobody asked for.
While searching for Microsoft Photos, a new app called âOneDrive Photosâ showed up in my results out of nowhere, and it appears to have arrived either via a Windows Update or an update for the OneDrive sync client on Windows.
For thoseâŚ
New Outlook is âpainful and drives me crazy,â one user told me as their organization prepared to ditch Outlook Classic. But does that mean Microsoft will hold off on its plans to force New Outlook? Certainly not. According to Microsoftâs roadmap, it still plans to move all Classic Outlook users to New Outlook starting in March 2027, and weâre not that far away now.
New Outlook for Windows has been around for almost three years, as it was first rolled out to testers in 2023. Fast-forward to 2024, and Microsoft released New Outlook forâŚ
The Hot Take: M$ is the only one to give us Ads on Windows 11....
LG is removing a McAfee pop-up ad from its LG Monitor App Installer after criticism that some LG monitors were silently installing the app through Windows Update and showing ads on every boot. Microsoft says LG agreed to disable the McAfee pop-up, but the broader issue remains: Windows allows certain peripheral companion apps to install automatically without notifying users. Ars Technica reports: Following Gamers Nexus' video, a Microsoft representative stated that the LG Monitor App Installer will no longer show pop-up ads for McAfee. InâŚ
Microsoft is acting further on its promise to fix some of Windows 11's worst annoyances. The company is rolling out changes in the Windows Insider Experimental channel that promise a less cluttered search box that largely eliminates ads, although you'll need to tweak settings to get the best results.
The Hot Take: Linux seems to be hovering and Windows is apparently listening to it's end users Finally. We'll see where this goes.
StatCounter's June 2026 data shows Windows made up 56.55% of global desktop OS usage, dropping Microsoft's share below 60% for the first time in years. Linux, meanwhile, reached 4.39%, "one of its strongest recent showings in the company's desktop OS statistics," reports Linuxiac. From the report: Apple's desktop platforms also remain a major part of the picture. StatCounter lists OS X at 11.89% and macOS at 4.48% for June 2026, meaning Apple's combined desktop presence remains comfortably ahead of Linux in the global chart. Chrome OS followsâŚ
The Hot Take: Nice, but all to push cloud storage I'm assuming.
Microsoft has announced another new recovery method for Windows 11 PCs that will allow users to reinstall the OS using the cloud. The new recovery tool is called Cloud Rebuild which will restore a PC to a "clean, known-good state by performing an entire OS reinstall."The new Cloud Rebuild feature will download the Windows OS along with your devices drivers, and seamlessly install them during the recovery process so that your device is fully functional once the OS reinstalled, all without needing an external USB install drive."Unlike Reset thisâŚ
The Hot Take: Nore more docker on Windows? Interesting.
Windows 11 can now build, run, and manage Linux containers on its own, without Docker Desktop in the background. Microsoft calls this WSL Containers, and after installing the preview and running a few real workloads through it, here is what works, what still needs Docker, and how to get it running on your own PC.
WSL Container should not be confused with the next version of WSL 2, as we already covered how Microsoft shut down the WSL 3 rumors. It has now shipped as a public preview, so we installed it, built a custom container image fromâŚ