On September 21, 2023, during a special event in New York, Microsoft announced that it will ship a major feature update for Windows 11 on September 26. The day has arrived, which means that users of stable editions of Windows 11 can download and install Windows 11 Momentum Update 4.

The Moment 4 update contains plenty of important and expected changes. Copilot, Microsoft’s newest AI-powered assistant, is now out of preview with a fresh new taskbar icon. The taskbar finally lets you ungroup icons and show labels, and features a redesigned volume mixer with per-app sliders and easier output device switching. File Explorer also received multiple improvements, such as support for various archive formats (RAR, TAR, 7Z, and more), better tabs, modern UI elements, and more. Finally, there are new features for Paint, the Photos app, and the Crop tool.

Windows 11 Moment 4 is now available as an optional update through Windows Update. You can ignore it for now, but Microsoft will make it mandatory when next month’s Patch Tuesday updates are released (scheduled for October 10, 2023).

As a reminder, the Moment 4 update is not Windows 11 version 23H2. The latter will arrive later this year, bringing customers some of the remaining features that were not included in today’s release. Our full Windows 11 version 23H2 review, including Moment 4 update features, is available here.

If you’re ready to embrace the latest Windows 11, check out our recently published guide detailing how to install the Windows 11 Moment 4 update. You can also download it for manual installation From the Microsoft Update Catalog.

In case you missed it, on September 21, 2023, in addition to unveiling the Windows 11 Moment 4 update, Microsoft announced four new Surface devices: Surface Laptop Studio 2, Surface Laptop Go 3, Surface Go 4, and Surface Hub 3.