The era of forced Windows Update for Windows 10 users is coming to an end. In a surprise move by Microsoft today it was announced that – at least for feature updates – users will be given an "update available" notification, allowing some choice as to when such an update is actually installed.

"In previous Windows 10 feature update rollouts, the update installation was automatically initiated on a device once our data gave us confidence that device would have a great update experience. Beginning with the Windows 10 May 2019 Update, users will be more in control of initiating the feature OS update. We will provide notification that an update is available and recommended based on our data, but it will be largely up to the user to initiate when the update occurs."

In a post entitled "Improving the Windows 10 update experience with control, quality and transparency" by Mike Fortin (Corporate VP, Windows), Microsoft's stance on the update process seems to have shifted at least partially back to the Windows 8.1 (and prior) era, wherein users actually had the option of when to download and install the updates of their choice. While not going quite that far the post does state that "all customers will now have the ability to explicitly choose if they want to update their device when they 'check for updates' or to pause updates for up to 35 days". The exception will be devices nearing end of service, at which point "Windows update will continue to automatically initiate a feature update".

The full post from Microsoft is available at the source link.