Windows 10 20H2 / 2009 / October release Available now

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Finally Windows 10 20H2 is released to the public, but for all the participants in Windows Insider programme the news are “old” news 🙂 This is the beauty of being a member to the program, testing all the features and affecting the development of Windows by giving feedback to the team behind. Thanks!

First of all if you upgrade by using Windows Update this update is quite small, the upgrade is just an enablement package that enables all the new features that already exist on your recently updated Windows 10 2004 (Released in the monthly quality update October 13, 2020). This is due to Windows 2004 and 20H2 share the same core operating system/system files and the features updates will stay disabled until the enablement package/master switch is installed and activates the new features. This will make sure your restarts will be less and the upgrade will be faster. If you upgrade from an earlier version, say 1909, the enablement package cannot be used so instead it is bundled in the upgrade and the installation time will not be reduced in this scenario.

The enablement package is found here
Windows Update and Microsoft Update simply called Feature Update to Windows 10, version 20H2
WSUS will automatically synchronize the update if you enabled Product: Windows 10 and Classification: Upgrades
The Microsoft Update Catalog does not include this update

Note the prerequisites: KB4577266 and KB4579311

So how do the feature affect your end-users?

Windows 20H2 updates mixed with some Edge updates

Edge Chromium

First the big news. This is the first version where the Edge Chromium is built-in. So no more installing Edge after deployment

Settings – about

Windows 10 20H2

Notice the Copy button?

Windows 10 2004

Start menu

Windows 10 20H2

See how the tiles are blending in with the current theme? This is called theme-aware tiles

Windows 10 2004

Switching apps/Edge tabs

Windows 10 20H2

Now you have the options to use ALT+TAB to switch between tabs. Default is the last 5 tabs in Edge, but there are other options for you!

Edge pinning

Windows 10 20H2

If you pin a web side (File>More tools>Pin to taskbar) it will show you all pages from the website regardless of what Edge window it is in – Nice!

Focus assistant/Notifications

Windows 10 20H2

Focus assistant will not notify by default of missed events, this is default in earlier releases

Display refresh rate in Settings

Windows 10 20H2

Now you have the option to change the Refresh rate directly from Settings

Notifications enhancements

When notifications appear there are new app logos at the top of the notifications to make is easier to identify where they are from. And! there is a new “X marks the spot” that lets you close

MDM policy updates

New CSP policy to let us modify local groups and users similar to legacy GPOs. (Requires Intune or other 3rd party MDM tool

More secure biometric sign on

Windows Hello now offers added support for virtualization-based security for certain finger and face sensors which secures and isolates users biometric authentication data (Requires special hardware and documention will come later this year)

Windows Defender Application Guard and Microsoft 365 Apps and Edge

Windows Defender Application Guard(requires Windows 10 Enterprise) can now protect Microsoft 365 Apps (requires Microsoft 365 E5) and Edge with hardware isolation. So untrusted sources and documents will be opened in a virtualized container

Did I miss anything? Please comment below!

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