On the off-chance you're not already aware and are just joining us like Ash Williams in the original ending of Army of Darkness, Microsoft's official support of Windows 10 will end on October 14, 2025. But rather than a hard cutoff, Microsoft is continuing to blur the edge of this deadline by extending support in specific use cases.
The latest end-of-support caveat is that the Windows 10 versions of the Microsoft 365 suite of applications—that's your PowerPoint slides, Word documents, and your Excel spreadsheets—will continue to receive security updates for another three years, until October 10, 2028 (via The Verge). That said, Microsoft will still advise users to upgrade their OS—especially if they encounter an issue in the Windows 10 version of any of their Office apps that can't be replicated in Windows 11.
It was previously thought that the Windows 10 versions of these apps wouldn't outlive the OS; according to The Verge, a now deleted blog post had claimed "Microsoft 365 Apps will no longer be supported after October 14, 2025, on Windows 10 devices. To use Microsoft 365 Applications on your device, you will need to upgrade to Windows 11." However, it turns out Microsoft isn't actually backpedalling.
ZDNet reports that the post in question was not an official announcement, originating on a blog specific to Microsoft non-profit customers and written by a junior employee at the company. A Microsoft spokesperson said the post "contained inaccurate information and a misleading headline," and the post was in fact deleted the same day it was published.
That doesn't mean that there's nothing to see here as far as Microsoft is concerned, though. I could make a joke about Microsoft's current approach to security updates, given that the company recently told Windows 11 users not to delete a mysterious empty folder labelled "inetpub" as it was apparently pivotal to a recent system security update. However, given that the company has just announced plans to lay off 7,000 employees, I'm not really in a joking mood.
If you happen to still be on Windows 10—recent Steam surveys suggest this remains true for a staggering amount of PC gamers—then you've got a few options, which Ian outlines in his guide. It had been previously announced that commercial customers and educational institutions still would have the option to pay for Windows 10 security updates beyond October, but Microsoft are now offering the option for Extended Security Updates (ESU) to individual consumers as well.
Otherwise, if you're not a huge fan of Microsoft, you've got the option of third-party security patches that could keep your Windows 10 machine safe for the next half a decade. Failing that, you could finally make the jump to Linux.
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