How to Delay Windows 10 Updates

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Windows 10's twice-a-year updates mean more new features, more often. Unfortunately, major updates can also break things. If you'd rather wait until the bugs are squashed, tweak this setting and delay those updates until they've gone through more testing.

Starting with the May 2019 Update (version 1903), Microsoft stopped forcing these updates quite as strongly as it once did. Instead of automatically installing big feature updates, you'll see an option in the Windows Update settings to download and install the update at your leisure. At least, until the version you're currently running is nearing the end of support—at which point you’ll need to upgrade.

Pause Updates for 7 Days

Thankfully, you have a few options for delaying updates big and small. Open the Settings app and select Update & Security > Windows Update, where you can download new updates as they're made available. You'll also find a "Pause updates for 7 days" button.

Windows lets you click this up to five times for a total of 35 days. Alternatively, you can click Advanced Options and pause updates until a specific date.

Delay Updates for 365 Days

Those with Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise, or Education, meanwhile, have even more power—Microsoft has a deferral feature that lets you delay all updates for up to 365 days after they're released. This allows businesses to test major feature updates on a few machines, make sure everything works, then roll it out to the rest of the company when they're ready. 

Since many of us have Windows 10 Pro on our home desktops and laptops, we can also take advantage. However, with the release of the May 2020 update (version 2004), Microsoft has hidden it away where typical users won’t find it.

Open the Start menu, type “group,” and click Edit Group Policy to open the Local Group Policy Editor. In the left sidebar, head to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update > Windows Update for Business.

For the purposes of this guide, you’ll want to concern yourself with two of the options here: Select When Preview Builds and Feature Updates Are Received, and Select When Quality Updates Are Received.

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Preview Builds and Feature Updates are those big, twice-a-year version changes, while Quality Updates are the smaller security patches you get more regularly—I wouldn’t recommend delaying those much, if at all. But you can delay feature updates up to 365 days by double-clicking the relevant option in group policy, setting it to Enabled, and changing the number of days in the Options box.

Under Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update, you can also double-click Configure Automatic Updates, enable it, and set it to option two. This ensures Windows will notify you before downloading and installing updates rather than doing so automatically. Just be sure you actually download those security updates in a timely manner.

Of course, the longer you defer updates, the longer you'll miss out on new features, so this is best used for those mission-critical machines you can't afford to lose. You can then test the update on a secondary machine, if you have one, to see if it's stable enough for your daily work, and update your other computers accordingly.

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