(Photo by Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
More Windows 10 users will soon have the option to upgrade to Windows 11, Microsoft says.
“Today, we’re excited to share that the upgrade offer to Windows 11 is beginning to enter its final phase of availability, putting us ahead of our initial plan of mid-2022,” Chief Product Officer Panos Panay wrote in a blog post.
Microsoft launched Windows 11 on Oct. 5 for the newest Windows 10 machines as a free upgrade. Now the company is signaling older PCs will get the chance to upgrade too — but only if the hardware meets the minimum required specs. (Check out our guide to learn more on receiving the free upgrade.)
According to Panay, many Windows 10 users have already been opting into the free upgrade. “Since the launch of Windows 11 in October, we have seen strong demand and preference for Windows 11 with people accepting the upgrade offer to Windows 11 at twice the rate we saw for Windows 10,” he wrote.
That said, Microsoft has likely been offering the Windows 11 upgrade to a smaller user base than it did with Windows 10, which was running on over 110 million devices a few months after the initial launch back in 2015.
On Windows 11’s rollout, Panay himself acknowledged: “Product quality was a huge focus for the team, and we took a deliberate and phased approach to how we rolled out the upgrade.”
It’s also important to note that many PCs that are more than four or five years old are not eligible for the Windows 11 upgrade, although you can still install the OS manually.
The other notable announcement from Panay is how a public preview of the Android app support on Windows 11 is going to kick off next month. Currently, the option to run Android apps on the OS is restricted to Windows Insider users through a beta test.
Next month, the company also plans on introducing “taskbar improvements with call mute and unmute, easier window sharing and bringing weather to the taskbar, plus the introduction of two new redesigned apps, Notepad and Media Player,” Panay added.
Microsoft Windows 11 Preview
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