Microsoft showing Windows 11 upgrade prompts on more Windows 10 devices

Starting April 2024, Microsoft is extending upgrade offers to Windows 11 on Windows 10 devices. The company announced the plan on its Tech Community website this week.

When Microsoft released Windows 11 in late 2021, it enabled upgrades for a subset of devices only. Staged rollouts are used to detect and address issues that have not been noticed during development. In the case of Windows 11, Microsoft had to address AMD performance issues among other issues.

Microsoft showed upgrade prompts to Windows 10 users regularly. The Windows 10 update KB5020683 of 2022 included such a prompt for instance.

It announced the availability of Windows 11 and used a dark pattern design to increase conversions. The prompt highlighted the "upgrade" action and did not include an option to skip the offer permanently.

Recently, Microsoft started to show upgrade prompts again to Windows 10 users. The full screen popups told users that Microsoft recommended Windows 11 for their PC. This one did include an option to decline the upgrade.

The next wave of Windows 11 upgrade prompts

Microsoft announced the next wave of Windows 11 upgrade prompts on its Tech Community website saying that it has "good news" for its customers.

There, the company reveals that it plans to display Windows 11 upgrade prompts to "Windows users working on cloud-domain joined and domain joined non-managed business devices".

In other words: any device that is not managed but joined to a domain or cloud-domain may see the prompt to upgrade.  This happens only on devices that meet the Windows 11 system requirements.

Microsoft changed the system requirements of its Windows 11 operating system significantly. This change locks out hundreds of million of devices from upgrading to Windows 11 officially. Users may use bypasses to install the operating system on unsupported hardware.

Microsoft has not enforced system requirements up to this point, but it may introduce a change later this year that will shut out some devices from upgrading to the next feature update for Windows 11.

Microsoft uses a dark pattern design to push Windows 11 conversions in the new prompt. The main two actions of the prompt are "get it" and "schedule it".

Windows 11 users who do not want their device to be upgraded to Windows 11 need to locate the tiny "Keep Windows 10" option on the white bar in the lower left corner of the screen.

Windows Update will download and install Windows 11 version 23H2 on devices if users select either "Get it" or "Schedule it". Get it starts the process immediately, schedule it will run the upgrade at a later point.

Most non-managed Windows 11 devices that are not domain-joined have received upgrade prompts already. This one is probably not the last that users of domain joined Windows 10 PCs that are not managed will see. Selecting the "keep" option is therefore only a temporary recourse.

Now You: which operating system do you use?