What is the Windows 10 21H2 Update and when will it ship?

What is Windows 10 21H2 Update?

Somewhat over shadowed by October’s Windows 11 launch is the 2^nd update for Windows 10 in 2021. Windows 10 21H2 is a minor update to Windows 10 and is delivered as a small cumulative update to the OS, so the update is quick and easy to install.

Windows Insiders started testing the update in July with devices on the Windows Insider program that were not able to run Windows 11. I have run it on few devices and so far it seems very stable.

What are the changes to Windows 10 21H2?

There are only a few changes with Microsoft saying they focused on security and productivity:

Windows 10, version 21H2 will have a scoped set of features focused on productivity and security, prioritized to meet our customers’ needs based on feedback. New features focused on productivity, management and security include:

Adding WPA3 H2E standards support for enhanced Wi-Fi security

Windows Hello for Business introduces a new deployment method called cloud trust to support simplified passwordless deployments and achieve a deploy-to-run state within a few minutes

GPU compute support in the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and Azure IoT Edge for Linux on Windows (EFLOW) deployments for machine learning and other compute intensive workflows

We added a new policy that creates generic strings and removes branding-specific terms, such as “Windows” or “PC”, for IoT Enterprise editions. For example, we changed “computer” to “device”. Instead of “Getting Windows ready,” we changed that to “Getting things ready” and so on. These generic strings are displayed on a user’s screen when an update is in progress

There will also be security fixes in the release.

When will Windows 10 21H2 be released?

Microsoft haven’t given an official release date yet, but I expect it to be around the time of Windows 11’s launch (October 5^th).