Microsoft has stuck to the same update pattern for Windows for a while now: new features once a year, bug fixes throughout the year. That's now changing, starting with this month's Windows 11 update.

Microsoft is rolling out a Windows 11 update with tabs in Notepad, a Bing AI Chat shortcut in the taskbar, screen recording in Snipping Tool, and other features. The update didn't have an official name, but a new article from Microsoft intended for IT workers calls it the "March 2023 monthly quality update," and says it's the start of a new update cycle for Windows.

The blog post explains that Windows 11 will continue to have yearly major updates, but features may roll out in monthly quality updates. The first one with the above-mentioned changes will officially start rolling out on March 14, 2023, also known as Patch Tuesday, through Windows Update.

The new release cycle is a significant reversal for Windows, which has mostly limited new features to once-a-year major updates, starting with the initial release of Windows 11 and Windows 10 version 21H2. Microsoft was rolling out major Windows 10 updates twice each year before that, which was causing a lot of problems. Smaller updates were already being released throughout the year, on top of the typical bug fixes and security patches.

Microsoft's new Windows update cycle could lead to more bugs -- the popular customization tool Start11 is temporarily broken after this month's update, for example. We'll have to wait and see if Microsoft can handle monthly Windows 11 upgrades better than it handled semiannual Windows 10 upgrades.

Source: Microsoft

Via: The Register