Active Hours is a new feature recently released within the Insider (beta) version of Windows 10, and will be part of the upcoming anniversary release of Windows 10.
Think of Active hours as your business work hours, or the time frame that you most use your computer. By setting Active Hours, you can make sure that your computer will NOT automatically restart after updates are installed during those times.
By default, Active Hours is defined as 8am to 5pm (relative to your time zone).
To change your Active Hours,
- Click Windows+I to go to the Settings app
- Click Update & security
- Click Change active hours
Unfortunately, the valid range for active hours is 10 hours. And, keep in mind – you are defining your busiest work hours so as to avoid automatic reboots. Personally, I would have preferred if this would have been the time frame when we would want reboots to occur.
And for those Group Policy people, yes, Active Hours can be set and changed within the Group Policy Editor.
Go to: Local Computer Policy –> Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Updates and locate the “Turn off auto-restart for updates during active hours” policy.