To keep your system up-to-date with the latest patches and features, Windows 11 installs updates automatically in the background. Want to know what’s been installed? Viewing the update history on Windows 11 is straightforward. In this tutorial, we’ll show four easy ways to find out which updates are installed on Windows 11. Let’s get started.
Using the Settings App
Start by opening the Settings app. You can do that by pressing Windows key + I or right-clicking the Start menu and selecting Settings.
In the Settings window, navigate to the Windows Update page and click on Update History.
This page shows the Windows 11 update history divided into four sections: Quality Updates, Driver Updates, Definition Updates, and Other Updates. For the most part, you’ll want to look at the Quality Updates section. It shows the history of all installed cumulative updates along with their installation dates. To learn more about each update, click the Learn more link next to the respective history entry. This will take you to the update’s change log page.
For driver update history, expand the Driver Updates section. The Other Updates section provides update history related to Windows Security (Defender), system configuration, Windows intelligence, and the Malicious Software Removal Tool.
Using Command Prompt
Press Start, type Command Prompt, right-click on it, and select Run as Administrator. Type the wmic qfe list command in the Command Prompt window and press Enter. It immediately shows all the installed updates on Windows 11 along with their installation date and HotFix ID.
Note: This command only shows the update history of installed Quality Updates (cumulative updates) and not of Driver Updates, Definition Updates, and Other Updates.
Using PowerShell
Right-click on the Windows logo on the taskbar and select Terminal (Admin). This will usually open a terminal with the PowerShell tab active. If you don’t see PowerShell, click on the downward arrow icon and choose ‘Windows PowerShell’ from the menu.
In the terminal window, type Get-HotFix and press Enter to get a list of installed updates on Windows 11. The command will show the HotFix ID and installation date.
Note: This command only shows the update history of installed Quality Updates (cumulative updates) and not of Driver Updates, Definition Updates, and Other Updates.
Using PSWindowsUpdate PowerShell Module
You can also use the PSWindowsUpdate PowerShell module for a detailed view of your Windows 11 update history. Here’s how:
Press Windows key + X and select Terminal (Admin). In the terminal window, type and run the following command.
Install-Module -Name PSWindowsUpdate
If prompted with NuGet provider is required to continue, type Y and press Enter.
When you see the Untrusted repository prompt, type A and press Enter.
Next, run the following command to change the PowerShell execution policy.
Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -scope CurrentUser
After that, import the installed PSWindowsUpdate module using the following command
Import-Module PSWindowsUpdate
To get the update history on Windows 11, execute the following command. It will list all installed updates, their installation dates, and statuses (Result).
Get-WUHistory
Optionally, you can save the update history to a text file. To do that, run the following command while replacing the dummy path to the text file with the actual path.
Get-WUHistory | Out-File -FilePath "C:\Path\To\Text\File.txt"
Related: How to find Windows update size on Windows 10 & 11
- Original published date: Feb, 2022.
- Updated on: 26/10/2023.
