Windows 10 October 2018 Update is now out

Windows 10 October 2018 Update

Microsoft has made the October 2018 Update live, giving Windows 10 users the opportunity to manually grab the upgrade now, or wait until the automatic rollout process starts next week.

This was announced at the big press event which has just happened, where plenty of fresh Surface hardware was unveiled.

Microsoft is encouraging folks to wait for the rollout to bring the update to their PCs, although in a blog post, it notes that ‘advanced’ users can manually check for the upgrade if they want to grab it now.

Simply type ‘check for updates’ in the taskbar search box (next to the Start button) to see if the October 2018 Update is ready for your machine. Windows will still check to make sure your device doesn’t have any potential compatibility issues, and if it does, the update won’t be made available to you (for obvious reasons).

Alternatively, you can check out our full guide on how to download and install the Windows 10 October 2018 Update.

Speedier rollout

Otherwise, if you don’t want to jump on this one early, the automatic rollout will begin on October 9, and will be a staged process happening over the coming weeks (or indeed months – though machine learning tech is now being employed to speed up the rate at which the rollout happens).

Microsoft noted: “We will be further enhancing the performance of our machine learning model by incorporating more device signals such as improved driver telemetry and weighting of key features such as anti-malware software as we broaden the phased rollout.”

Spotting any compatibility gremlins is obviously a key issue, as the last thing Microsoft wants is PCs hitting major problems during the installation – something which has happened in the past with some update rollouts, as you may recall.

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).