WAU Manager (Windows Automatic Updates Manager) is a fully featured replacement for the built in Windows Updating interface. This tool gives you full control of the Windows Updates, such as when and how they are installed, and has full uninstall and maintenance support for Windows updates.
WAU Manager was built to fully replace the built in Windows Automatic Updating (WAU) system. However, unlike the latter, WAU Manger puts you in control of everything. With WAU Manager you can:
- Update manually when desired with just a double-click on a dedicated desktop shortcut
- Update automatically with the desired frequency. Once a day, once a month or once a year, or whatever you decide.
- You get to choose whether the available updates are automatically downloaded and installed or not.
- Easily uninstall several updates at once.
Basically you just need to make a few adjustments from the Dashboard dialog box to set everything up the way you want. If you need more advanced options, such as uninstalling or hiding/unhiding updates, they are all available straight from the Setup interface. The available modules are all linked together by the application menu, always available at the top right corner of the application's interface.
WAU Manager does not use the built in WAU schedule. Instead, it has its own schedule which works regardless of whether WAU are enabled or not. In fact, for WAU Manager to work flawlessly, you should disable Windows Updates completely. You can do that in WAU Manager's Dashboard module.
Besides the Dashboard module, WAU Manager has four more modules:
- The Install updates module, which searches for available updates, and installs the desired ones. You can also hide updates from this module. Hidden updates are not displayed as available for install.
- The Uninstall Updates module, which lets you uninstall or hide updates that were previously installed.
- The Unhide Updates module, which lets you view hidden updates and unhide the desired ones.
- The View update history module, which displays the Windows Update history and lets you perform maintenance actions related to Windows Update.
WAU Manager does not disable the wuauserv service. Windows 10 uses the wuauserv service for many things other than to install the latest patches, such as updating Windows store apps, updating the Windows defender definitions and installing feature updates. WAU Manager takes care of the latest patches and the Windows defender definitions, but not the rest, so we can not just disable the service.
WAU Manager disables the automatic updates by setting up a group policy in the registry. Windows 10 does not respect this group policy completely. It will still search for mandatory updates regularly and eventually install them. Let’s hope that will change in the future when they realize that users want full control of the automatic updates.
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