Microsoft explains why ‘Patch Tuesday’ falls on a Tuesday

For some a well-known phenomenon, for others perhaps only noticeable because it takes longer to start up and shut down the PC: the Windows updates on the second Tuesday of the month. According to Microsoft, this day was not chosen randomly.

In a blog post about the release of patches, Microsoft’s John Wilcox writes that there are two reasons for choosing Tuesday. For example, this would give administrators time to work on other things on Monday, for example things from the previous week. The second reason is that basically there is still the rest of the week to spend testing the updates and troubleshooting.

Wilcox also explains that in 2003 it was decided to move to a monthly update point, rather than releasing patches as soon as they were ready. That should make it more predictable for administrators. Patch Tuesday, also referred to as the b release, contains security patches.

Sometimes it happens that this day is skipped or that a so-called out of band update takes place, for example in the event of a serious leak or if there are problems that affect a large number of devices. Microsoft recently said it wants to avoid inconvenient updates, perhaps a pleonasm, with machine learning.