Windows 11 2022 Update

Windows 11, version 22H2 (codenamed Sun Valley 2) is an upcoming feature update for Windows 11, which is scheduled to succeed the original release in fall 2022. According to Windows Central's Zac Bowden, the new release could start rolling out on 20 September 2022, with the first so-called moment update following as soon as October.

The new version will include minor improvements to the core experience, such as support for third-party Widgets, tabs in the File Explorer, a redesigned Task Manager, as well as certain functionality omitted from the original release of Windows 11, such as drag-and-drop support for the taskbar.

Dev builds of the update also introduced several features originally teased in the June 2021 event, including the redesigned versions of Notepad, Paint and Media Player, as well as the Windows Subsystem for Android, although most of these have since then been backported to the original release in the form of cumulative updates.

History
References to a future 22H2 update based on the Copper codebase were first unintentionally added to telemetry documentation in April 2021 alongside similar references to the initial Windows 11 release, as well as the Windows 10 November 2021 Update. The target later shifted to Nickel, with build 22567 being the first Insider Preview build to include version 22H2 branding.

An update to the Get Started app pushed in late August 2022, which was reverted soon afterwards, refers to the update as the "Windows 11 2022 Update". However, as the update and its name have not been officially announced yet, it is currently unknown whether this will become the actual name or is just a placeholder.

Moments
This release introduces a new kind of updates called Moments, which will ship multiple times a year and will consist of a limited set of new features backported from contemporary Dev builds. They use the same mechanisms used for Windows 10 feature updates released after the May 2020 Update, which are mere regular updates applied on top of build 19041 that happen to enable new experiences and bump the reported version information. Similarly, moments also bump the reported build number, although it is unknown whether they will also end up changing the version identifier.

Moments are reportedly a part of Microsoft's revised development cycle with a new major version of Windows releasing every three years, while the period between two major versions is spanned by frequent feature drops.