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At the start of this month Neowin noticed Microsoft had quietly begun pushing the KB5001716 update, a periodic release that is meant to install feature updates on Windows 11 and Windows 10 computers. We speculated that this was likely the final push as the end of support for the latter was coming up soon (even governments are starting to warn users about it).

Ever since Microsoft announced Windows 11 almost four years ago, there has been significant controversy on a fairly regular basis about stringent hardware requirements that need to be met in order to legitimately run the operating system. A major concern revolved around the fact that Windows 11 mandates TPM 2.0, something that is not present in older processors, rendering otherwise perfectly fine PCs obsolete.

This week's news recap is here with Patch Tuesday updates, Copilot+ PCs coming to desktop, hotpatching for Windows on ARM, Microsoft Edge updates, several reviews, and gaming news.

Google recently released Chrome 138, and with it, killed uBlock Origin and other Manifest V2-based extensions (Microsoft is doing the same in Edge).

So, Google went ahead with a major change of the extensions system that Chromium uses.

Windows 10 is reaching the end of mainstream support, and while there are options to extend that phase by paying up for it or signing up for Microsoft's cloud backups of your PC's settings, hundreds of millions of users now have a choice to make. This revolves around whether they should stick with their current operating system, upgrade to Windows 11, or migrate to a non-Microsoft OS entirely. Since we are now at a crossroads, it's perhaps time to revisit an important topic: the telemetry data that Windows collects about you.

Windows 11 just made managing settings easier with a new AI agent, and here's what you need to know.

The Blue screen of Death is disappearing after nearly 40 years.

It has been almost two weeks since Windows Insiders have received an update in the Beta Channel, and one has just dropped: Windows 11 Build 22631.5696 (KB5062663) is now available for download via Windows Update.

Elon Musk's xAI today announced Grok 4, its latest flagship multimodal AI model. xAI claims that Grok 4 is a top-tier AI model with state-of-the-art performance in academic, mathematical, and reasoning benchmarks. The Grok 4 Heavy version, with multi-agent tools, delivers even more impressive gains in popular AI benchmarks.

Microsoft has released Patch Tuesday updates for Windows 11 24H2, 23H2, and 22H2. The 24H2 update is provided via KB5062553, while the 23H2 and 22H2 updates are delivered via KB5062552.

It's the second Tuesday of the month, which means it's Patch Tuesday time again. As such, today, Microsoft is rolling out the monthly security update (also called "B release") for July 2025 on Windows Server 20H2 and Windows 10 for the latest supported versions, 20H2, 21H2, and 22H2.

Customizable widgets, dynamic widgets, battery percentage indicators, and gamepad support are all coming soon to the lock screen on Windows 11.

The latest update introduces visual enhancements, AI features, and a preview of upcoming file transfer improvements.

On July 8, 2025, Microsoft begins the rollout of the July 2025 Security Update for Windows 11, and in addition to the typical fixes and improvements, this update also packs some new features and visual changes.

Back in February earlier this year, we benchmarked Windows 11 24H2 vs 23H2 performance on a clean-installed PC following one for an in-place upgrade to see if one or the other was the better way to upgrade.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Thunderbolts' tops the chart, followed by 'Ballerina'. 'Heads of State' completes the top three.
 
The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.
 
Downloading content without permission is copyright infringement. These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources.

At the end of last month, Microsoft officially announced Windows 11 25H2 which is now entering public testing phase via the Insider program for Dev and Beta channels (build 26200.5670 for Dev and build 26120.4520 for Beta).

This week's news recap is here. Windows 11 is finally more popular than Windows 10, Microsoft fires a lot of workers and closes studios, tone-deaf communications from execs (speak to Copilot if you were fired), a single Windows 11 preview build, and more.

Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) wants Microsoft to provide longer support for Windows 10.
Windows 10 users are stuck in a pickle (to put it mildly) as Microsoft's end-of-life deadline for the operating system edges closer, due on October 14, 2025.

WhatsApp, an instant messaging app that Meta bought in 2014, is getting ads. Meta confirmed after years of speculation.
 
All other major Meta services have already been inundated with a steady stream of ads — think Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and the latest addition to the Meta family, Threads, which got ads not long after its birth. So, the fact that WhatsApp still didn’t have ads as of 2025 felt like an oddity — something that ran counter to Meta’s entire ad-driven business model.

And, although the eventual arrival of ads in WhatsApp was a long time coming and is in line with what Meta has been doing before, we can't help but regret this development.
Where will the ads be?

Microsoft Edge version 138 started rolling out last week, and users quickly noticed it's missing an important visual design that was originally introduced specifically for Windows 11.

Increase PC gaming performance on Windows 11 with these system tweaks and optimization features.

Although you can play games out of the box on Windows 11, there are still many tweaks you can apply to further improve your computer's gaming performance.

Following the non-security preview updates for Windows 11 last month, Microsoft also released Windows 11 dynamic updates (KB5062233/ KB5060843/ KB5062197/ KB5061090) for Setup and Recovery.
 
Alongside that, Neowin noticed that Microsoft also quietly downloaded and installed the KB5001716 update on Windows 10 and 11 PCs. For those not familiar, the tech giant pushes this update out whenever it wishes to force-install a new feature update onto PCs. However, Microsoft tends to do it quietly as it says that "the notification will respect full-screen, game, quiet time, and focus assist modes."

AnduinOS is the brainchild of Anduin Xue, a software engineer at the company famous for not building Linux distros. It's not Windows, but it has that familiarity.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Final Destination: Bloodlines' tops the chart, followed by 'Sinners'. 'The Phoenician Scheme' completes the top three.
 
The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.
 
Downloading content without permission is copyright infringement. These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources.