Although Windows 10 isn’t getting feature updates anymore, and most of its major releases have run out of support too, the operating system is still officially supported until October 14, 2025. This means that Microsoft will continue providing security and quality updates to Windows 10, but it isn’t committing to the relatively bigger annual releases that Windows 11 is getting. That said, the OS is still receiving minor enhancements and one nifty improvement hitting general availability soon is the Windows Backup app.
As spotted by Neowin, the latest Windows 10 build 19045.3391 made available to the Release Preview Channel earlier this week contains the Windows Backup app that was rolled out to Windows 11 Dev Channel in May 2023 via build 23466. As the name suggests, this app enables users to back up their folders, files, photos, apps, settings, and credentials, and restore them when required. All of this content is synced to your OneDrive, which means that you can only utilize the storage you have access to; the service offers 5GB for free currently.
The restore process is handy too, as it not only restores your apps but also pins them to their original location, along with syncing Windows settings and other preferences. That said, an interesting observation in the Windows 10 implementation is that the restore capability is not offered in the out-of-the-box experience (OOBE), which could mean that it’s meant for people shifting from a Windows 10 to Windows 11 PC rather than just two machines running the older operating system.
Microsoft has not confirmed if this is the intended experience, but with the feature already available in Release Preview, we may not see major changes before it eventually rolls out generally. That said, the release timeframe for the Windows Backup on Windows 10 is still unknown as of now.