Credit: Microsoft
Microsoft officials have said nothing publicly about the upcoming Windows 10 feature update. Although there have been sightings of references to 21H1 in Insider test builds and some Microsoft documentation, there has been no other official information about the next release.
That was until yesterday, February 15th. A post on the Microsoft Tech Community blog about the Windows Hardware Compatibility Program (WHCP) – identified by Neowin.net – provided “official” confirmation that Windows 10 21H1 is coming and will be a minor update, as the rumors say previous ones had indicated.
The Windows 10 2H1 feature update, such as 20H2, will behave almost like a cumulative update. Drivers that meet Windows 10 2004 requirements do not require new signatures. Windows 10 2004, 20H2 and 21H1 will all be based on the 2004 code base, the blog post notes.
The reason this is significant is because a number of IT professionals have become accustomed in recent years to the release of a major Windows 10 feature update by Microsoft in the spring, followed by a small update in the fall. This year, the spring / H1 update will be minor. Rumors say the Windows 10 autumn / H2 feature update will be bigger, in terms of new features. Among these new features are a number of changes to the user interface and user interface of the embedded application that are codenamed “Sun Valley”.
Microsoft employees are not talking about any of this other than the blog post mentioned at this point. The Windows team has not yet released a 21H1 trial version for the Beta or Release Preview rings, although this is expected to happen relatively soon.
As soon as Microsoft finishes 21H1 after being tested – and probably continues to add fixes and updates to it – it will start rolling out 21H1. The process will probably be like what happened with 20H2. The 20H2 update was supposed to be a small update for 2004, activated with an “Activation Package”, which looks a lot like a cumulative update. For anyone running a version prior to 2004, the 20H2 update has been updated as a normal Windows 10 feature release – meaning it won’t be as fast and painless. (This is the same way that Microsoft released Windows 10 1909, which was a small update to 1903.)