Microsoft released .NET 11 Preview 7, moving NativeAOT to default in the CLI for major startup performance improvements and adding C# 15 features like union patterns and labeled loop control. Simultaneously, security servicing updates for .NET 8, 9, and 10 address ten CVEs, including two critical remote code execution vulnerabilities that demand immediate patching. Developers should prioritize migration from .NET 8 and 9, both of which reach end-of-support on November 10, 2026, just three months away. The preview concludes a dense release window with significant library additions, including IEEE 754 decimal types and ZIP password encryption, ahead of .NET 11's STS target date.
Microsoft has raised Windows OEM licensing fees by 7% to 10% effective July 2026, marking a steeper increase than previous annual hikes. This comes as PC makers face a compounding cost crisis, with RAM prices surging 110% and SSD costs jumping roughly 147% since early 2026. Industry analysts expect OEMs to pass these rising expenses to consumers, leading to further price increases for pre-built PCs in the coming quarters. If you are in the market for new hardware, securing a purchase now may help you avoid higher costs later.
Microsoft released another PowerToys preview build today, delivering a focused update on stability and quality rather than new features. The release resolves a critical regression in the Settings General page caused by a WinUI style mismatch and eliminates visual artifacts in Quick Accent by implementing DWM cloaking. Developers also improved install path resolution for elevation-aware scenarios and expanded the UI test suite with extensive coverage across x64 and ARM64 architectures. The update highlights rapid community responsiveness, with a bug reported and fixed within hours, and acknowledges Copilot's role as a co-author on several contributed pull requests.
Microsoft PowerToys Preview v0.101.2211.0 has been released today, headlined by Advanced Paste's new on-device AI provider powered by Phi Silica, which runs locally without requiring cloud API keys or sending data off-machine. The release wraps up a long-running architectural shift by migrating Mouse Jump from WinForms to WinUI 3, unlocking multi-device support for future Mouse Without Borders integration, while 15 Command Palette PRs tackle memory retention issues and responsiveness bottlenecks. Additional improvements include IPC pipe hardening that resolves stale-state crashes, a guided Bug Report flow with direct GitHub shortcuts, and a new Stable/Insider update channel selector in Settings.
Microsoft Edge is accelerating its deprecation of Manifest V2 extensions, targeting full removal by the end of 2026 to align with Google Chrome's Chromium standards. The transition replaces persistent background pages with service workers, caps filter rules at 30,000, and bans remote code execution, effectively killing uBlock Origin and forcing ad blockers into reduced-functionality modes. While Microsoft defends the move as a security upgrade, privacy advocates argue it creates a backdoor for trackers and strips users of browsing control, leaving those who rely on legacy tools with no choice but to switch to Firefox, Brave, or Vivaldi.
Microsoft released the fourth preview build of its WinGet v1.30 train, packing in manifest schema updates, admin uninstall security hardening, and critical crash fixes for unattended installs. The build specifically targets automation workflows by resolving an HRESULT 0x8000ffff error that broke the combination of --disable-interactivity and the experimental Resume feature across three consecutive previews. Behind the scenes, Microsoft is finalizing test infrastructure upgrades, migrating NUnit to v4, and enforcing stricter per-user versus machine-wide package boundaries ahead of the stable release. Enthusiasts can test the preview immediately via the winget source, though Microsoft cautions that the Resume feature remains too unstable for production environments.
Microsoft's July 2026 Azure SDK update drops the azure_storage_sas crate for Rust, giving developers the first real client capability to build scoped Shared Access Signatures without exposing account keys. Python takes center stage with ten new libraries, including four stable releases for domain registration, certificate management, resource health, and data boundaries to streamline enterprise compliance and TLS automation. Beta access also arrives for resilience management across both Python and Java, signaling a push toward cross-language service reliability operations alongside broader coverage for billing, marketplace, and Power Platform tooling. The package updates land on PyPI, crates.io, and Maven Central now, though Rust developers will need to wait a bit longer for client libraries beyond storage to keep pace with the foundation stack.
Windows Package Manager v1.30.80-preview arrived on July 29, 2026, with a new optional telemetry event that tracks Microsoft Store catalog installs flowing through the winget CLI. The dedicated ETW event logs only Store product IDs and install sources, while fully respecting existing user opt-out settings and avoiding personal data. The preview also finishes two major internal refactors, upgrading the test suite to NUnit v4 and standardizing CppWinRT coroutines with /await:strict. This third drop in the v1.30 cycle includes dependabot security updates and stable regression patches, with Microsoft continuing its accelerated preview cadence ahead of the stable release.
Windows Package Manager v1.30.70-preview arrived on July 22, 2026, as a maintenance build that addresses two significant regressions without introducing new features. The release targets a catastrophic crash affecting --disable-interactivity when paired with the Resume experimental feature, a critical issue for enterprise automation pipelines, alongside a configuration elevation bug that broke DSC operations via app execution aliases. The 15 merged pull requests also cover infrastructure improvements, including certificate rotation, an NUnit v4 upgrade, and dependency updates for the WinGetLogViewer tooling. These stabilization patches have already been backported to the v1.29 stable branch, ensuring existing users can resolve the regressions without waiting for the next major milestone.
Microsoft has dropped the first preview build for Windows Package Manager v1.30, but this release is strictly a stabilization window with zero new features. The only reason to pay attention right now is a high-severity patch that fixes a crash breaking --disable-interactivity workflows when paired with the experimental Resume checkpoint system. Alongside that critical fix, the preview delivers medium-severity validation corrections, build compatibility tweaks for Visual Studio 2026, and repository line-ending normalization. Standard users should ignore this update and stick to the stable WinGet 1.29.280 release, as only automation testers and preview channel consumers will actually benefit from the changes.
Microsoft has released Windows Terminal 1.24.11911.0 and Preview 1.25.1912.0 to address critical issues while delaying the upcoming version 1.26 release. Key fixes include resolving a tab-dragging crash, preventing an NVIDIA driver deadlock, and patching memory corruption within the DRCS font subsystem. These servicing updates also carry over earlier improvements like Kitty Keyboard Protocol support and disabled store licensing checks to ensure stability. Users can update immediately via the Microsoft Store, WinGet, or GitHub releases to apply these fixes.
Microsoft has released simultaneous servicing updates for .NET 8, .NET 9, and .NET 10, alongside the sixth preview of .NET 11, all patching 17 critical vulnerabilities. .NET 11 Preview 6 ships C# unions, OpenAPI 3.2 defaults, and CoreCLR for MAUI, while the current platforms sprint toward their November 10 end-of-support date. Developers running .NET 8 or 9 have roughly four months to apply patches and migrate before security updates dry up. .NET 10 remains the recommended LTS path for production, extending support through November 2028 with significant JIT and post-quantum cryptography improvements.
Microsoft has confirmed it will retire nearly 70 products and services throughout 2026, marking the most aggressive end-of-support push in recent memory. From Windows 11 24H2 and Office 2021 to legacy SQL Server and on-prem Dynamics suites, the cutoff dates are already locked in. The company is doubling down on Microsoft 365 and Azure, leaving perpetual licenses and legacy infrastructure with a strict expiration date. Keep your infrastructure team on the clock and map your migrations to July and October deadlines before the support taps run dry.
Microsoft has officially released TypeScript 7.0, replacing the JavaScript-based compiler with a complete rewrite in Go. The new architecture unlocks true multi-threaded compilation and delivers roughly 10x faster build times across typical workloads. As part of this overhaul, older module resolutions and deprecated flags are gone, while defaults like strict and esnext are now hard requirements for all projects. Teams can run old and new versions side-by-side using the @typescript/typescript6 compatibility package while waiting for stable programmatic APIs in TypeScript 7.1.
Microsoft's June 2026 Azure SDK update stabilizes the Rust ecosystem at version 1.0.0, locking seven core crates with semver guarantees and production-grade observability. Python developers gain their first stable AI Transcription client alongside Planetary Computer Pro, which brings richer response models and a notable breaking change for existing collectors. The Azure Functions MCP extension ships its full native primitive set with Entra ID authentication, while the azd CLI delivers nine releases adding Go Functions support and safer multi-layer provisioning. Finally, infrastructure performance gets a real boost from direct Blob-to-GPU streaming that cuts model load times by 6x, paired with a critical Java Cosmos DB deserialization patch before Node.js 20.x drops out of support on July 9.
Microsoft has confirmed that .NET 8 and .NET 9 will both reach end of support on November 10, 2026, cutting off all security patches and technical assistance after that date. The company is urging developers to upgrade to .NET 10, its Long Term Support release that will remain supported through November 2028. Starting with a future Visual Studio 2022 update, the older runtime components will be flagged as unsupported, though existing applications will continue to run without intervention. Organizations should review their codebases and vendor software now to ensure they can migrate to net10.0 before the hard deadline arrives.
Microsoft has released PowerToys v0.100.2, a targeted patch that resolves a memory leak draining the Command Palette and Performance Monitor dock. The update reverts a recent refresh mechanism and stabilizes network tracking by reusing existing list items instead of dynamically generating new ones on every metric update. This free, open-source Windows utility suite continues to deliver a modular collection of over 30 productivity tools that fill persistent gaps in the native operating system.
Windows Package Manager v1.29.280 is now available as a release candidate, introducing an experimental source priority system that lets you manually rank repositories and reduce annoying disambiguation prompts. The build packs heavily requested automation upgrades, including an --no-progress flag for cleaner CI/CD pipelines, preserved custom installer arguments during export and import, and fully sortable list output. Microsoft has also tightened default installer selection to favor MSIX and MSI formats while patching several edge-case crashes and resolving PowerShell GitHub API rate-limit bottlenecks.
Microsoft’s PowerToys project has dropped v0.100.1, a targeted stability patch that squashes a cluster of bugs from the previous release. The update fixes Color Picker window trapping, Keyboard Manager key remapping errors, and Quick Access XAML crashes that were plaguing v0.100.0. Power users will also notice improved monitor wake behavior on dual-GPU laptops and corrected number-key rendering in Shortcut Guide. The release ships immediately on GitHub with separate installers for x64 and ARM64 systems across both per-user and machine-wide setups.
Microsoft’s May 2026 Azure SDK release officially stabilizes the Rust client stack alongside a sweeping wave of resource management libraries across .NET, JavaScript, Python, and Go. The drop also upgrades Azure AI Search with agentic retrieval tooling and rolls out a preview suite for hosting custom AI agents directly on Azure. .NET developers gain a stable Azure Batch library at version 1.0.0, complete with breaking changes carried over from the beta cycle. You can pull these packages immediately via the official SDK releases page, though the agent server libraries will still require careful version tracking as they rapidly iterate.
