Windows 10 May 2020 Update is rolling out much faster than Microsoft’s last big upgrade

(Image credit: Future/Microsoft)

Windows 10 May 2020 Update is off to a robust start, accelerating to a solid level of adoption in its first month of release – and moving much faster than Microsoft’s previous major update in 2019.

This is going by figures from AdDuplex, which compiles monthly reports breaking down the adoption of different versions of Windows 10, and found that in its first month (plus a few days) of release, the May 2020 Update is now on 7% of PCs.

That’s based on a sample of almost 150,000 Windows 10 machines which run AdDuplex’s adverts (in apps and games from the Microsoft Store).

What’s really interesting is that if we compare that to AdDuplex’s stats for the last major upgrade to Windows 10 – the May 2019 Update (remember that the November 2019 Update was only a minor service pack-style affair) – this only achieved 4.9% adoption in its first full month after release (and around 1.4% in its first week out previous to that).

Cautious approach

You may recall that Microsoft adopted a slightly more cautious approach to the May 2019 Update rollout following the disastrous previous upgrade, the October 2018 Update.

Speaking of the latter, which was the most-bugged-ever Windows 10 update, that in itself had only reached 6.6% adoption at the end of 2018 after it had been out for three months (although the rollout was paused for a month, of course, after that awful file deletion bug reared its ugly head).

So as you can see, the May 2020 Update hitting 7% straight off the bat in its first month represents a much speedier rollout.

That said, the upgrade has not been without problems, including most recently messing with the storage of some PCs that have installed the May 2020 Update. If you’ve made the move and are encountering problems, we’ve got a full guide explaining how to fix the most common May 2020 Update issues.

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).