Windows 11 continues to accrue more users, with Microsoft’s latest operating system now installed on nearly 3 out of 4 desktop PCs across the world. StatCounter currently reports that Windows 11 has a market share of 72.78%, jumping from just over 50% from late 2025. In line with this, we also saw a drop in active Windows 10 installs, with the older operating system now only at 26.27% — down from around 45% in the same period and a far cry from the more than 80% it commanded during its heyday.
Microsoft launched Windows 11 in October 2021, but it took several years for it to overtake Windows 10 in popularity. In fact, it wasn’t until several months after the company announced that it was ending support for the older operating system that it finally gained the majority from its predecessor. The biggest issue that stopped many users from upgrading was its stringent hardware requirements, which stopped millions of still working PCs from upgrading. Another issue is Windows 11’s insistence on using a Microsoft account for setting up your computer, with many users balking at giving the company their information.
Many users are exploring workarounds for these hardware and account limitations, but Microsoft is actively making it much more difficult to do so. Because of this, some feel that they’re losing control over their own machines as big tech continues to erode ownership. It could be that this jump in Windows 11 use is more from people upgrading their computers rather than a conscious decision to upgrade their operating system. We’ve even seen a phenomenon where former Windows 10 users are moving towards macOS, or to Linux, instead of buying the Copilot+ PCs that Microsoft and Qualcomm have been pushing hard since it launched in the summer of 2024.
Another thing Windows 11 users have to deal with is the various buggy updates that Redmond has been releasing with frustrating frequency. This ranges from annoying but harmless issues, like a missing sign-in password icon or reduced gaming performance on some Nvidia discrete GPUs, to potentially losing data due to unintended BitLocker recovery, the inability to control your PC in Windows Recovery Environment, and your PC outright refusing to boot after a security update. Things have gotten so bad that Microsoft promised that it would fix Windows 11’s most annoying flaws earlier this year, but we’ll have to wait and see how this will turn out in the coming weeks.
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