The Windows Forecast is a look at the future of Windows that comments on the latest news for Windows Insiders, as well as other major announcements in the Windows space each and every week. My name is João Carrasqueira, and I've been covering the world of Windows professionally since 2018. If there's something you'd like to see covered, you can reach me at joao@xda-developers.com

2025 is officially here! After the slowdown of the holiday season, things are getting back into motion, and it's the perfect time to look ahead at what's coming to Windows in 2025. Of course, not a lot is really announced for Windows so far, but there are some things we know of, and some speculation to be done.

Copilot+ is finally becoming complete in 2025

Recall is finally coming

Copilot+ PCs were the big thing in the Windows world in 2024, but in reality, there wasn't much value to anything there. The headlining feature Microsoft originally announced was Recall, but due to privacy controversies, it was... erm, recalled, until it finally made its debut for Windows Insiders near the end of the year. On top of that, Copilot+ features have remained exclusive to Snapdragon-powered PCs for the entirety of 2024, with Intel and AMD PCs only receiving some of them in the Insider program right at the end of the year, too.

2025 is the year all of this will come to fruition and fully deliver on Microsoft's vision for Copilot+ PCs. I suspect this will all arrive fairly early in the year with a major update for Windows 11 version 24H2, which will both enable the existing features for Intel and AMD-powered PCs and roll out the second wave of features Microsoft has been testing in the Insider program, such as Click To Do.

But I also expect even more AI-powered features to appear throughout the year. For one thing, Click To Do still has a relatively limited range of actions that can be taken, and I expect that those will expand significantly over time. But I also believe we'll see even more features being added to Copilot+, especially if we see more powerful NPUs later in the year when Qualcomm potentially introduces the second generation of the Snapdragon X Elite or Intel talks up its Panther Lake processors.

Another potential avenue for expansion of Copilot+ is GPUs. It's no secret that Nvidia's GeForce GPUs come packing some incredible AI capabilities with their Tensor cores, but these aren't supported by Copilot+ because they're not NPUs. However, this hardware could definitely enable those Copilot+ features if Microsoft wanted to allow it, and I think it would be ridiculous if we went all of 2025 without Microsoft embracing that possibility. I definitely believe Copilot+ could expand to devices with powerful GPUs as we progress through the year.

What will the big 2025 update be?

Is it time for Windows 12?

I did say Copilot+ features would be available with a "major update" but by that I meant something like the Moment updates we got throughout 2023 and 2024 before version 24H2 came around. However, Microsoft has been releasing o proper feature update every year in the second half of the year since Windows 11 was first launched. Versions 22H2, 23H2, and 24H2 were all pretty big updates, and that strategy has fallen in line with what Microsoft promised with the original Windows 11 announcement. Annual feature updates are part of Microsoft's commitments.

At the same time, however, we kind of expected 2024 to be the year of Windows 12, until Panos Panay left Microsoft and plans shifted to continue on Windows 11. For 2025, it's really not clear what the plan is yet.

The most likely scenario is that Microsoft would give us Windows 11 version 25H2, but at this moment, there isn't an overwhelming amount of features in the Insider program that would warrant a major feature update in the vein of version 24H2. It's possible that this will be more like what happened in 2023, where version 23H2 in itself wasn't necessarily a huge update, but many features were released for version 22H2 around the same time, which made the updates kind of blend together.

However, it could also be that Microsoft is in fact working on Windows 12 for this year. We saw in 2021 that the company can be very good at keeping its cards close to its chest when it wants to, so I wouldn't be shocked if Windows 12 had been in the works secretly in the background and we'll get a big blowout later in the year. Either way, some kind of update has to be coming in the second half of 2025, so we'll have to hear about it at some point.

A boring year for Windows laptops?

We probably won't see new laptop processors this year

The last couple of years have seen an unusually fast cadence of development of new processors, partly boosted by the rise of Qualcomm with the Snapdragon X series of processors. See, Intel had launched its 13th-generation of processors in early 2023 (and AMD launched the Ryzen 7040 series around the same time), but in late 2023, Qualcomm started talking up its new Snapdragon processor that seemed to put its competitors to shame. Intel and AMD both rushed new products out in December 2023 with Meteor Lake and the Ryzen 8040 series, with most of the focus being on adding an NPU.

And then Qualcomm's Snapdragon X processors actually launched in June 2024, and they still had far better NPUs, performance, and efficiency than Intel or AMD's competing offerings. So in July, AMD pushed out the brand-new Ryzen AI 300 series of processors and Intel followed in September with its Lunar Lake lineup.

These two companies have launched three generations of products within two years, and that cadence is not sustainable, so the most likely outcome for 2025 is that we won't see a brand-new lineup of processors hit the market this year. They may be announced later in the year, but I'd wager the best case scenario is a launch near December, with most products with the new processors shipping in early 2026.

Of course, that just leaves the door wide open for OEMs to put more effort into offering unique design or software features, but those are harder to predict, and their impact isn't as widespread.

The death of Windows 10

It's finally happening

Aside from new things in 2025, this will also be a year of goodbyes for a lot of people, as Windows 10 is going to finally reach the end of its support cycle in October 2025. UNless you choose to pay for the extended security update program, you will stop receiving updates for Windows 10 after October, and you will be pushed to upgrade to Windows 11 if your PC is supported.

If your PC isn't officially supported by Windows 11, you can look into bypassing some of the requirements, or it may be time for a new computer. Or, if you want to join the dark side, you can always switch to a Linux distribution on your computer.

The last security update for Windows 10 that all users can get for free will arrive on October 14th, 2025. Consumers can pay for the ESU program to get one additional year of updates. If you're in a business environment, you can actually get up to three years of additional security updates, but those updates are much more expensive.

What do you want out of 2025?

2025 has just begun and there are a lot of unknowns, so if you have any specific wishes for what Microsoft should do with Windows, now is a great time to voice them. I already wrote about what I wanted to see from Windows 2025 all the way back in April of last year, and I'd say most of those points still stand. You can check those out below if you need some inspiration.