Reports of a major shakeup in Windows development were the talk of the town recently, with talk that Microsoft wanted to completely change how feature updates for the OS were to be released.
The idea being, to launch what the company called Moments.
These are supposed to be smaller refreshes of the operating system that would add new features that the Windows team is developing. Above them will be yearly refreshes of Windows, named after the year of release, and right up top would be new versions of the OS, launched once every three years.
Well, it appears that all these rumors were true!
Tidbits of upcoming Insider builds related to the Moment update have begun surfacing providing us with hints at what’s cooking over at Redmond.
Albacore, a famed Windows watcher, has confirmed the details of this new strategy. Build 22490 has been spotted in a PowerShell issue opened back in July, and according to the leaker, this range of builds belong to the 2nd Moment update.
Nice to see a mention of 229xx builds!
These are dedicated to development of the 2nd update/"Moment" for Windows 11 v22H2. First comes v22H2 GA, then Moment 1 in October, and Moment 2 sometime next year. Every Moment brings a few new features, e.g. Tabs in File Explorer in M1. https://t.co/SBPOXRb5sT— Albacore (@thebookisclosed) September 4, 2022
He further goes on to reveal that the 1st Moment update has its own set of Insider builds, which will arrive under the 228xx range. These updates are being backported to the recent Windows 11 Beta channel builds that have been happening under build 22622.
Long story short, Microsoft is gearing up to release its first Moment update shortly after the launch of Windows 11 22H2 in September.
It may arrive in the first week of October, and is likely to add a bunch of new features to the platform. These include tabs and a new sidebar for File Explorer, as well as something called Suggested Actions that give users prompts for the next steps to take based on the text they have selected.
The second Moments update is then expected to drop as a cumulative update next year.
It remains unclear whether more Moment updates are planned, but it is clear that Microsoft is pursuing a new strategy for servicing its flagship OS.
