Windows 11 KB5089573: Worth rolling out now, don’t wait for June

If your Windows 11 laptops have felt sluggish opening applications or logging in, Microsoft has shipped something worth acting on: the optional KB5089573 update, released on 26th May. It’s not a security patch, but it’s a genuine performance gain you can roll out to your business fleet today, rather than waiting for the forced June update.

The update includes 30 changes aimed at making everyday Windows interactions feel snappier. According to Microsoft’s official release notes, it “accelerates app launch and core shell experiences such as Start menu, Search, and Action Center.” It also fixes a mildly annoying Windows Hello behaviour where your machine would quietly revert to PIN login after a restart, ignoring the face or fingerprint you’d set as the default.

The performance numbers doing the rounds suggest app launches can feel up to 40% faster and the Start menu up to 70% more responsive. Benchmarks are benchmarks, so treat those figures as best-case rather than a promise, but the underlying change is real. This is the Low Latency Profile work we wrote about earlier this year finally arriving in production code, rather than Insider builds. For most businesses the payoff is less dramatic but still welcome: menus open without hesitation, logins don’t stall, and staff machines feel a bit less frustrating across a full working day.

Why deploy it now rather than wait

Because KB5089573 is optional, it won’t install itself. Staff machines will sit on the slower version until June’s mandatory rollout unless someone actively pushes the update. For a firm in Rhyl or Denbigh where people are logging in and out across shared machines all day, a month of smoother workflows is worth having. Waiting costs nothing on paper; it just leaves a small but real improvement unused.

The update also quietly improves File Explorer reliability and tidies up Windows Hello behaviour after the machine wakes from sleep. There are some AI-related tweaks for newer laptops that carry a built-in AI accelerator chip, but those won’t affect most machines currently in use across North Wales businesses.

How to roll it out

If you manage your own Windows 11 fleet, go to Settings, then Windows Update, then Advanced options, then Optional updates. KB5089573 should be listed there for both the 24H2 and 25H2 versions of Windows 11. Test it on two or three machines first, then push it to the rest once you’re happy. If you use a formal patch-management system, it’s available through the Microsoft Update Catalog. No rollbacks have been reported; Microsoft ran this through the Insider programme for several weeks before release.

Smooth, fast machines make for happier staff. Clunky ones create low-level friction every single day, the kind people tolerate rather than report, but that quietly eats into productivity. Dragon Digital handles Windows fleet patching and monitoring for businesses across North Wales, including rolling out optional updates like this one without disrupting your working day, if you’d like that taken off your plate.