Windows 10's Sync Your Settings improves Windows 11 migrations, but it is late to the party

Microsoft released optional updates for its operating systems last week. The update for Windows 10, KB5009596, improves the Sync Your Settings feature to improve the migration experience to Microsoft's Windows 11 operating system.

The changelog provides the following information:

Adds a new feature called Sync Your Settings for users who are migrating to Windows 11, original release. You’ll use Sync Your Settings to automatically back up a list of your applications to your Microsoft Account. Then, you can quickly restore those application on a Windows 11, original release device. This new feature that will deploy over the coming weeks.

Sync Your Settings is not a new feature of Windows 10, as it has been part of the Settings application. Microsoft could have created an independent feature and called it Sync Your Settings as well, but this seems unlikely.

The new functionality adds a list of installed Microsoft Store applications to the linked Microsoft Account, making it easier to restore these on Windows 11 devices if the same Microsoft Account is used to sign-in. Microsoft revealed that it will roll out the feature to all Windows 10 devices "over the coming weeks".

Closing Words

The new Sync Your Settings feature improves migrations to Windows 11. It is unfortunate that the feature is being introduced months after the release of Windows 11 final, as users who migrated to Windows 11, for instance by purchasing a new device because their old computer was declared incompatible with the new operating system, did not have it at their disposal in the past months.

A direct upgrade from Windows 10 to 11 should keep data, including applications, installed. Most applications and programs remain compatible, and these should remain installed after the upgrade. Sync Your Settings is therefore mostly useful to users who install Windows 11 without selecting to keep data or start using a different device with Windows 11.

The new update is an optional update. Most administrators may want to wait with the installation, as Microsoft uses Telemetry data to detect bugs and issues. The update will be introduced as part of February's Patch Tuesday update, which Microsoft will release on February 8, 2022.

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