Kevin Malinoski

I’ve been glued to the (virtual) screen for Ignite this week, and while the Agentic AI + Windows 11 compatibility news and deeper Security Copilot integration in M365 E5 are super cool, the session that actually made me sit up straight was “The future of managing updates on Windows.”

People, Windows Autopatch in 2026 is about to eat everyone’s lunch—in the best possible way. Here are my rapid-fire takeaways from the live session:

1. Hotpatching is officially a must-have

Microsoft dropped stats showing hotpatching literally cuts patching timelines in half compared to traditional update rings. No more “please reboot tonight” guilt trips. In the era of Agentic AI where endpoints are doing real work 24/7, this is non-negotiable. If you’re still sleeping on hotpatch, wake up.

2. Granular control inside maintenance windows

Finally—real control over when quality updates actually install and the ability to block specific payloads from rolling out. Staging + downtime respect = happy admins and even happier end-users who aren’t getting surprise restarts at 2 PM on a Tuesday.

3. The new Readiness Dashboard is straight fire

• Autopatch device readiness analytics
• Device-specific update timelines
• CVE reporting with one-click expedite options

But the part that got the biggest reaction from me?

Autopatch Alerts + Quick Machine Recovery

• Proactive, device-level alerts with exact remediation steps before devices go stale. Reactive patching is dead—this is proactive health monitoring on steroids.

• Quick machine recovery (aka Cloud-managed restore points) for the entire Intune fleet. Yes, you heard that right. Bad patch? Roll the whole device back from the cloud, even fix boot-time issues. (CrowdStrike summer flashbacks, anyone? Microsoft just handed us the ultimate “oh no” button fix.)

Bottom line from the session

If you haven’t onboarded to Autopatch yet or given your update rings a serious health check in the last 6 months—do it now. The product team was crystal clear: 2026 is when Autopatch goes from “nice to have” to “how did we ever live without this?”

I’m already carving out lab time this weekend to start testing the new readiness features and quick recovery workflows.

What was your favorite Ignite announcement so far? Drop it in the comments—I’m still catching up on the flood of sessions!