Earlier this month, a Microsoft senior official confirmed that Windows 11 24H2 was not yet generally available for all eligible systems in response to a report we published. While that may have been disappointing from the perspective of an enthusiast, the good thing is it should not be all that long before we get the next feature update.
In its recently published blog post about improved Copilot data protection, Microsoft confirmed when Windows 11 version 24H2, the 2024 annual feature update for Windows 11, will be released.
Microsoft wrote:
The shift to the Microsoft 365 app as the entry point for Microsoft Copilot will align with the annual Windows 11 feature update release. Changes will be rolled out to managed PCs starting with the optional non-security preview release on September 24, 2024, and following with the monthly security update release on October 8 for all supported versions of Windows 11. These changes will be applied to Windows 10 PCs the month after.
Thus it looks like Windows 11 24H2 will be out as a preview towards the end of this month as a C-release and the official general availability for all compatible systems will be on October 8th 2024 via the monthly Patch Tuesday.
It is noteworthy that Windows 11 24H2 is already available for Copilot+ devices and the October 2024 Patch Tuesday will bring to the remaining compatible systems. For those who may not be familiar, Copilot+ PCs (both Arm64 and AMD64) have a minimum criteria of 40 NPU TOPS.
If you wondering whether your PC is compatible with 24H2, Microsoft is not altering the system requirements for the new version, though devices running very old processors will no longer be able to bypass the requirements.
The October 8 2024 Patch Tuesday update will also see another major change. The company announced yesterday that Quality Updates will now be pushed during the initial provisioning (OOBE) on Intune-managed devices.
Besides these changes, Microsoft has also introduced a way to deliver cumulative updates via checkpoints, although it is causing trouble at the moment leading to MSU install failures.
Update, September 19, 2024, 20:45 GMT: Microsoft has now denounced the release date for Windows 11 24H2 G.A. and may be indicating a delay of sorts.