Estimated reading time: 2 minutes.

One of Windows 10’s most frustrating features is the way it installs updates. Unless you’re using an enterprise version, updates are almost completely out of your control. You can’t prevent them from installing, and there’s very little you can do to control when they install, or when your computer restarts to complate installation.

While developing Windows 10, Microsoft somehow failed to understand that downloading, installing, and rebooting for updates automatically at potentially inconvenient times might be annoying to users.

The good news is that Microsoft is finally going to do something about this. What did it take to get Microsoft to look at the problem? A steady stream of customer complaints, starting immediately after Windows 10 was released.

The bad news is that you still won’t have any real control over when updates happen. Instead, Microsoft is planning to improve Windows 10’s ability to detect that a computer is in use before it automatically reboots. This is from the recent post Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17723 and Build 18204:

“We trained a predictive model that can accurately predict when the right time to restart the device is. Meaning, that we will not only check if you are currently using your device before we restart, but we will also try to predict if you had just left the device to grab a cup of coffee and return shortly after.”

It’s too early to know how well this will work in practise, but at least it’s a (small) step in the right direction.