This feature-packed OS powers a more than billion PCs
Windows 10 has become the most popular operating system for desktop computers, with more than 1.3 billion active PCs running it. Despite focusing on the new Windows 11 release—now rolling out—Microsoft continues to support Windows 10 with servicing updates. The OS continues to offer unique capabilities like touch input, a voice-based virtual assistant, face login, Windows Defender security, and mixed reality tools. Still-important but more mundane features include an improved screenshot tool, better window arrangement, and unified notifications. The OS has reached a point of polish and functionality to earn it a PCMag Editors’ Choice award. The Latest Version The latest released version, Windows 10 November 2021 Update (aka 21H2), has started rolling out to PC users. In the same announcement of that rollout, Microsoft noted that major updates would come once per year rather than twice a year as we’ve had in the last few years. As with other recent “feature updates” (to use Microsoft’s terminology) the November 2021 update is largely a servicing update, with few major new features. Most of the updates target enterprise deployments, but support for VPNs, virtualization, and Wi-Fi 6 has been improved, as well as general security and reliability. One positive aspect of these minor updates, which Microsoft says consist of a “scoped set of features to improve performance and enhance quality,” is that they install quickly with minimal fuss. The previous May 2021 update included some changes that users may actually notice: The Chromium-based Edge became the built-in web browser that not only powers the Edge browser itself but also Windows store apps that require web access. That means both the browser and the apps that use the web engine become more compatible with websites, since the underlying rendering code is the same used by Google Chrome. It’s worth noting, too, that Edge runs on not only Windows, but also Android, iOS, macOS, and now even Linux. Before that, the October 2020 Update (aka 20H2) featured a slicker Start menu, a more functional Edge web browser, and other worthwhile tweaks. Windows 10 has benefited from recent in-between-update feature additions such as the News and Interests taskbar panel and the Meet Now icon in the task bar, for creating ad-hoc video conferences. Another change is that Adobe Flash support has been removed, a move that’s been a long time coming, since Adobe discontinued the once prevalent technology. Less universally noticeable changes are that Windows Hello now lets you choose among multiple webcams, and Windows Defender security software has been sped up. Earlier Windows 10 features still deserve attention, including Clipboard History (a lifesaver if you do copy and paste frequently), a powerful screenshot tool, Timeline, Focus Assist, Game mode, Dark mode, Nearby Sharing, parental controls, and an updated News app. The Your Phone app syncs photos, SMS messages, and even voice calls from Android phones and LTE-equipped laptops. These upgrades join Windows Hello face login and other Windows exclusives. Even with all its forward-looking features, the OS remains familiar to longtime Windows users. For intrigued Apple users, I’ve compiled a list of 15 Windows tips for Mac users. How Does Windows 11 Affect Windows 10? Major interface changes arrived in Windows 11, released on October 5,2021. The newer version of Windows features a redesigned taskbar, Start menu, and notification center along with Teams integration, rounded window corners, and a Widgets feature. In a shocker, the ability to run Android apps has been announced, but that feature didn’t make it to the initial release and is currently in preview on the Windows Insider Dev channel. Much has been made of the new version’s new requirements, but Microsoft recently added more hardware configurations the option to upgrade to Windows 11. I’ll be interested to see which, if any, Windows 11 updates make it backwards into Windows 10. Microsoft will support Windows 10 through at least 2025. Windows 10: A Success Story Over 1.3 billion actively used devices run Windows 10, as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella noted in the Build 2021 keynote—that’s a massive 300 million more than the last time Microsoft put out a number a year ago. Windows as a whole claims over 75 percent of all desktops worldwide ( StatCounter), and over 78 percent of those are Windows 10. By comparison, all versions of Apple’s macOS account for less than 17 percent. Linux as a whole gets about 2 percent, and Ubuntu and Chrome OS both sit below 1 percent worldwide. (Note that all these number are for internet-connected machines in use.) The newest Windows still runs the vast majority of the millions of existing desktop programs, something competing desktop operating systems can’t boast. Yes, that means it still uses the much-derided Registry to maintain configuration settings, but on today’s fast hardware, that’s no longer much of an issue. Microsoft now recommends against using any third-party registry-optimizing software for Windows 10. How to Get Windows 10 If you’re running Windows 10, getting the latest is a simple matter of running Windows Update, accessible from the Settings app. You should see the text “Feature Update to Windows 10, version 20H2.” For more detailed setup info, read How to Download Windows 10. If you don’t see the update in Settings > Update & Security, you can force the issue by heading to the Windows 10 Download page and running the Update Assistant app. If the update isn’t ready for your PC, the Windows Update page of Settings clearly tells you so. Windows 10 20H2 Update is a free upgrade for current Windows 10 PC owners. It’s also preinstalled on all new Windows PCs, but if you’re coming from Windows 7 or earlier and didn’t take advantage of the entire year it was a free upgrade, you can get the software via download or on USB sticks for $139 list for Home and $199 for Pro. You can usually find less-expensive options through third-party online digital retailers. Your data and programs come along for the ride when you update from previous Windows versions, though it’s always a good idea to back up your data before an OS upgrade. It’s better to wait for Windows Updates to automatically run the update, rather than forcing it, since Microsoft tries to validate updates for each hardware combination before auto-updating. Starting with the May 2019 Update, Microsoft increased the minimum hard drive size requirement for Windows 10 to 32GB from 16GB for new installations—still hardly massive by today’s hardware standards. The other system requirements remain surprisingly low: a 1GHz processor,1GB of RAM. The 64-bit version of Windows 10 increases the RAM requirement to 2GB. You’ll also need a DirectX 9-capable graphics card and a display with at least 800-by-600 resolution. Windows 10 is available to most users in just two editions: Home and Pro, with 32-bit and 64-bit options for each, though Microsoft is phasing out 32-bit versions. (Note that Windows 11 no longer maintains the now-antiquated 32-bit option.) Windows 10 Pro adds business-oriented things like network domain joining, Hyper-V virtualization, group policy management, and BitLocker encryption. That last one may be of interest to security-conscious personal users, too. There are, of course, other editions of Windows 10 for special use cases: The Enterprise version of Windows 10 is still an option for large organizations that want bulk licensing deals. Two Education versions target K-12 institutions: Windows 10 Pro Education and Windows 10 Education. And let’s not forget the lightweight edition that powers Internet of Things devices and the Raspberry Pi: Windows 10 IoT Core. The Windows 10 Interface Windows 10 presents almost no learning curve for longtime Windows users, while managing to incorporate many of the advances of Windows 8—faster startup, tablet capability, better notifications, and an app store. Its windowing prowess remains unmatched, letting you easily show the desktop and snap windows to the sides and corner quadrants of the screen. The Start menu is a differentiator from both macOS and Ubuntu, which have no centralized place for the user to start working with apps, files, search, and settings. Chrome OS has a Launcher tool, but that’s not as far-reaching as Windows’ Start menu. Another differentiator is that programs have their own menus, rather than using the operating system menus along the top of the screen as macOS and Ubuntu do. Fluent Design, Microsoft’s newish design language that uses translucency, blurring, and animation to give helpful visual cues, asserts itself more with each update. One fun Fluent effect is called Acrylic Material, which gives elements like menu bars a semi-transparent look and the appearance of depth when the mouse is over them. It now extends to nearly all Windows utilities, including the Start menu, Settings dialog, and Action Center. At Build 2020, Microsoft made Fluent open-source, so third-partly developers can use it in their apps, too. The search box next to the start menu was a big focus for the May 2020 Update. It’s no longer tied to Cortana with the AI’s icon attached, and it lets you search both your own local files (including any text within them) and those stored on OneDrive or in your corporate SharePoint servers. The search panel now has quick search buttons for weather, news, today in history, and top movies. The back end of desktop search has also received developer attention: It uses a new algorithm to determine when it should and shouldn’t perform its intensive indexing functions. Windows dark theme takes effect in the Start menu, Taskbar, as well as 23 included apps, though it still doesn’t apply to old-style Control Panels. And the new version of Edge can now abide by the system setting for light and dark mode. Another eye-saver I appreciate is Night Light, which reduces blue light to let you get to sleep easier, though by now all major OSes include a similar feature. The OS also has a true Light Mode, along with redesigned, more-colorful icons. The Start menu shows the All Apps list without a second button press, and it also shows most used and newly installed apps. You can set basic folder icons to appear, or not, as you choose. So, for example, you can have icons for File Explorer, Downloads, Documents, and so on appear right above the start button. The tiles left over from Windows 8 are still there, though you can turn them off. I find them useful for quickly opening my most-used apps. Another interface feature I’ve come to cherish is File Explorer’s Quick Access section. This lets you easily find whatever file you were last working on regardless of the application you were using. So, if you edit an image and want to add it to another app, it’s right at the top of the Quick Access list. You never have to remember where you just saved a file to find it quickly. One thing File Explorer lacks is tabbed windows, which both macOS and Linux have. Unfortunately, design differences between the Settings App and Control Panel remain, though the story is continually improving. For most system settings you use the Settings app, but for deep, technical system options, you still occasionally have to go to the Control Panel. Though you can get to deeper settings like Device Manager and Disk Management by right-clicking the Start button, Control Panel’s no longer an option there. Instead, you see it when you perform certain actions like trying to uninstall a legacy program. You can still open Control Panel by simply typing “Control” in the Start menu search bar. At this point, most settings that most users need are in the newer Settings app, but techies still see the old-design control panels. Microsoft continues to move even geeky settings from Control Panel to Settings, however, with Disk Management making the move in an upcoming release. Another feature that uses the older interface language, Disk Cleanup, is being replaced by Storage Sense in the new Settings interface. The feature automatically removes temp files and downloaded installers. You can run it on-demand using the Clean Now button, have it run automatically when your storage gets low, or set it to run on a schedule. Timeline This feature takes over the Task View, adding the elements of time, showing your activities over the past 30 days. It could indeed save time if you’ve been working in Office 365 or browsing in Edge, but it’s mostly for use with UWP and Microsoft apps at this point. A plus is that, if you are using the Microsoft Launcher on your Android phone, you also see activity from that. At first, I objected to the feature’s combining with the Task View for multiple virtual displays but have come to the conclusion that it’s clearly designed and well implemented. You can see currently running tasks at the top, and the Timeline entries below that. You can even search for your earlier activity. Recently, Microsoft released a Chrome extension that adds activity from Google’s browser to your Windows 10 Timeline. I’ve been using a Firefox extension that does the same thing for several months. Clipboard History One of my favorite recent features in Windows 10 is the revamped Windows clipboard lets you access several previously copied items, a convenience that’s long overdue on all computing platforms. You access the list of copied items using Windows Key-V instead of Ctrl-V. Syncing the cloud clipboard means that they’re accessible on other PCs you’re signed in to, and later this will extend to phones via the SwiftKey add-in keyboard. You turn on clipboard syncing in a new Settings option. According to Microsoft documentation, the clipboard history supports plain text, HTML, and images less than 4MB. New Screenshot Tools in Windows 10 Related to the clipboard are very convenient new Windows 10 screenshot capabilities. You can now hit Windows key-Shift-S to select a section of the screen that will be sent to the clipboard. Your selection can be a rectangle, a free-form shape, or the full screen. You can also take a screenshot that exactly fits a window on-screen, too. When you snap a screenshot with Windows Key-Shift-S, a panel appears in the lower-right corner of the screen offering the option to open the image in the new app. Tap this, and the Snip & Sketch utility opens. The new Snip & Sketch app lets you mark up and share your snipping. It even lets you clip a non-rectangular shape and draw circle sections with a protractor. You can crop screenshots, but there’s no aspect ratio option in the crop tool, so you can’t designate a square or standard widescreen (16-by-9) crop. Nor are there basic image adjusters for things like brightness and color or a text tool like that in macOS’s screenshot editor. Fortunately, you can open your screenshot in another image editing app directly from Snip & Sketch from the overflow menu. Another especially useful screenshot feature ties in with OneDrive, which you can set to store images when you tap the PrintScreen key for full screen capture or Alt-PrintScreen for the window in focus. This saves you the steps of going from the clipboard to image file saving in some image editor, such as Paint. For a full rundown on this frequently needed function, read How to Take Screenshots in Windows 10. The Mobile Connection The Settings app includes a Phone section, which lets you integrate your Android or iOS device with your PC. The Continue on PC app lets any browser on iOS or Android open a webpage immediately on a Windows 10 PC, or to create a notification in the Action Center with the link. For tips on how to get started with this feature, read Sync Your Smartphone to Windows 10 With Continue on PC. And that’s just the start. Using the iOS or Android version of the Edge browser provides even more integration. The next step, Your Phone, is the topic of my next section. Your Phone App The Your Phone app lets you see and even drag-and-drop photos from your phone, see notifications from, do SMS text messaging and make calls on a connected phone from the PC. You enable these by installing the Your Phone Companion app on the mobile. The catch is that this only works with Android, for now. Microsoft is working with Apple to try to get the same integration on iPhones, but I wouldn’t hold my breath, given the tight grip Apple keeps on its platforms.
