Welcome to the 2026 Edition of the Windows 11 Field Guide!

The Windows 11 Field Guide is being updated with the current edition renamed to the Windows 11 Field Guide 2026 edition. This edition covers all supported Windows 11 versions–24H2, 25H2, and 26H1–and the new and existing features that Microsoft is delivering to its customers. It will evolve throughout 2026 to address recent changes and to transition to what I hope will be a sleeker, more manageable book. This will require a lot of time and work and will likely occur over at least a few editions of the book.

This edition requires some contradictory work, some of which will reduce the page count and file download size and some that will increase both. I need to do both, and I want to do so without making this book less useful as a how-to and a reference.

Here’s what I’ve done and am doing.

Remove out-of-date content. Windows 11 is constantly evolving, and though much of that involves the addition of new features, Microsoft also removes features as needed. So I’ve removed the Mail, Calendar, Microsoft 365, and Movies & TV chapters as the apps those chapters covered are no longer included with Windows 11. I also edited the Microsoft Store chapter to remove content related to the movies and TV show content it no longer sells. (And I removed the stub Outlook chapter because it was just a “coming soon” note.)

Consolidate multiple chapters into single chapters. I’m working on a new format for the book that is only partially realized now. But in this edition, I consolidated three chapters related to upgrading into a single chapter and four chapters related to installing Windows 11 into a single chapter, both of which are shorter/smaller than the original content. I will continue looking for other places to make similar chapters.

Add new chapters. Some of the functional updates in Windows 11 this past year require new standalone chapters. So far, I’ve added new chapters about Microsoft Paint, Notepad, Quick Machine Recovery, and a short chapter on account security basics. More is on the way.

Update existing chapters. I’ve started updating some chapters with the new format, including Desktop and Passkeys, and several more are already in progress too.

Shift the focus away from Windows 10 upgrades. When I first wrote the Windows 11 Field Guide, helping people who were upgrading from Windows 10 to understand the differences was a key focus. But four years later, there are over one billion people using Windows 11, and Windows 10 will exit extended support for consumers later this year. So I’ve removed all the “Where did it go?” blurbs, and I will soon integrate updated Install and Upgrade chapters that replace multiple chapters in the current version of the book.

Screenshots. Two years ago, I reduced the quality and size of the screenshots used throughout the book to help make the published PDF and EPUB files you download smaller. Since then, I’ve been working on various format changes for the book based in part on my experiences writing Eternal Spring: Our Guide to Mexico City with my wife. And a big part of the coming format change for this book will include retaking and cropping screenshots so that they take up less vertical space, and then removing unnecessary screenshots. Both changes will result in a lower page count and smaller file downloads.

Shift content to other books and make bundles. This past year, I created a related book, De-Enshittify Windows 11, that overlaps with but also expands on the content in this book. De-Enshittify Windows 11 is a much smaller book than the Windows 11 Field Guide, and it’s less expensive. I will soon create a bundle that will let new readers buy this book and De-Enshittify Windows 11 for a lower cost than buying each separately. I am considering other smaller books that could be included in that or other bundles, and I may pull content out of this book to create smaller books that may just be bundled for free with this one. For example, separate and free Microsoft account Microsoft Edge books would save about 100 pages in length and significantly cut down the file download sizes. We’ll see.

Moving to annual editions of the book. I meant to do this for Windows 11 version 25H2, but the format changes I’m trying to make and the sheer size of this book made that difficult to impossible. So for now, I am changing how I think of each edition so that they are year-based instead of version-based. This makes sense because all supported Windows 11 versions are functionally identical, even if there are low-level differences in some cases. So I will update this edition for free to existing owners, as before, but now through the release of Windows 11 version 26H2 in late 2026. And then it will be time for a new edition.

Thurrott Premium members get it for free. As with my other books, anyone who is a Thurrott Premium member will get the Windows 11 Field Guide 2026 edition for free.

Thanks for reading!

–Paul
June 2026