Take Control Of Your Windows Updates

Microsoft has made it harder to tweak Windows updates, but you can still take control if you know how. Edward Munn shows you which settings to turn on and off.

- Edward Munn

Turn off automatic updates

Windows 10 doesn’t let you turn off automatic updates but you can stop them downloading by ‘metering’ your Wi-Fi network. Doing this tells Windows that you have a download limit (as you would if you were tethering from a mobile phone) and that you need full control over when you carry out large downloads (such as updates to the OS).

Open Settings, click Network & Internet then WiFi. Next, click the name of the current network and click the switch to ‘Set as metered connection’ (see screen grab below). From now on, you’ll need to open Windows Update and click Download to manually download any updates as they become available. Remember that failing to install updates can leave you vulnerable to security flaws that have been discovered in Windows.

If you’re not worried about receiving the latest features, you can choose to defer feature updates so that you don’t waste time installing any you don’t want. To do this, click ‘Advanced options’ from Windows Update and tick ‘Defer feature updates’ (see screen grab, above). Crucially, you’ll still receive all Microsoft’s security updates when they’re released, but new features won’t be delivered and installed until several months later.

Schedule updates for convenient times

The Windows 10 Anniversary Update added a handy feature that restarts your PC outside of your ‘active hours’ to complete updates with minimum disruption. By default, your active hours are set to 08.00-17.00, to prevent your PC from restarting during a typical working day, but you can set this to any time period of your choice.