Microsoft recently made important adjustments to its security feature "Smart App Control" (SAC) in the Windows 11 preview version for the Dev and Beta channels, removing the previous restriction that "you must upgrade to Windows 11 through a clean install to enable it."
This means that in the future, users who upgrade to Windows 11 25H2 on eligible devices will be able to use this feature directly without being forced to reinstall the system.
The latest preview version released this week is Windows 11 Build 26220.7344 (KB5070316), which mainly brings improvements in application update methods. This change related to smart application control first appeared in Build 26220.7070 (KB5070300), which was pushed to the same preview channel in November. Microsoft confirmed in the update notes of this version that in the future, users can directly turn on or off smart application control in the settings without reinstalling the system.
Intelligent Application Control is a cloud-based intelligent security service launched by Microsoft in 2022. It is only available in Windows 11 and does not support Windows 10. Therefore, it is also regarded as a differentiated security feature that drives users to migrate from Windows 10 to Windows 11. In the past, if users migrated from Windows 10 to Windows 11 through an in-place upgrade instead of performing a clean installation, they could not officially enable this feature. This is one of the reasons why Microsoft previously recommended that users upgrade through a clean installation.
According to Microsoft's latest instructions, users can toggle this feature on and off by themselves in "Windows Security Center > Application and Browser Control > Smart Application Control Settings". When enabled, Intelligent App Control will help prevent untrusted or potentially harmful applications from running, providing a layer of proactive protection at the system level.
Compared with traditional anti-malware solutions, Microsoft emphasizes that Intelligent Application Control is more "lightweight" in terms of performance impact. Because it focuses on intercepting the application before it runs, rather than scanning and killing the application after it is executed, it theoretically consumes less system resources and helps reduce the interference of background security processes on foreground work or gaming experience. For devices with weak configurations and limited available resources, this approach is expected to avoid significant performance drag while maintaining a certain level of security.
Currently, this change to remove the prerequisites for pure installation is still in the testing stage and has not yet been opened to all users of the official version. It is expected that this change will enter the release preview channel with subsequent updates early next year, and will then be gradually pushed to the stable branch and truly become a regular security option available for all supported Windows 11 devices.