When does your laptop stop getting security updates?

Three operating systems, three kinds of answer#

Almost everything written on this question answers it for one operating system and quietly assumes the other two work the same way. They do not, and the difference is not a detail of presentation. It changes what you are able to find out at all.

That table is also the reason our checker never asks you to pick your computer from a list. For a Chromebook the model is the whole question. For Windows the model tells you nothing, and a box asking for it would be theatre.

Chromebooks: your exact model has a date, and you cannot guess it#

Google publishes an Auto Update Expiration date for every Chromebook it has certified: as of 17 August 2026, 812 models from 71 manufacturers, each with a month after which that device stops receiving updates, including security updates. Nobody else in this article publishes anything like it. If you own a Chromebook, you can know the answer exactly, today, without inference.

The part that trips people up is that the date has almost nothing to do with your laptop. Those 812 models carry only 34 distinct dates between them, and 153 of them share a single one: June 2031. That is because the clock runs from the release of the underlying hardware platform, not from the day your particular laptop was designed, built, or sold.

Google's own wording is "ChromeOS devices receive 10 years of updates." The measurement is 10 years from the platform release date, and that second half is the part that gets dropped whenever the policy is quoted elsewhere. Ten years is real. It is not ten years from your purchase.

At the other end, the longest-dated Chromebooks certified as of 17 August 2026 run to June 2036: 27 models from 5 manufacturers (Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo). A Chromebook bought today with that platform inside it has a published support window longer than any phone on the market.

Windows: the date belongs to the version, not to your laptop#

Microsoft does not publish an end-of-support date for laptops. It publishes them for versions of Windows, and a version is something you change rather than something you own. This is why the question is so hard to search for: people are looking for a fact about their hardware, and the fact that exists is about their software.

Read down the table below and the pattern is plain: each Windows 11 release gets about two years of servicing on Home and Pro, and roughly a year longer on Enterprise and Education. The one running out next is 24H2, which reaches end of updates for Home and Pro on 13 October 2026. That is the version most consumer machines shipped with, which is why this particular date is about to matter to a lot of people who have never thought about Windows versions at all.

Read the 23H2 row twice, because it is the one that catches people. On Home and Pro that version is already past end of updates. On Enterprise and Education the same version runs to 10 November 2026. Same Windows, same laptop, different answer, decided by an edition most people have never checked.

One row in that table is not the escape route it looks like. 26H1 carries the latest date on the list, and Microsoft scoped it to new devices that came to market in early 2026: it is not offered as an in-place update from 24H2 or 25H2 on an existing machine. So if you are on 24H2 and looking for somewhere to go before 13 October 2026, the row that applies to you is 25H2, not the later number above it.

Windows 10: the one case where the machine really is the question#

Everything above assumes you can move to a newer version. Windows 10 is where that assumption stops, because there is no newer version of it: 22H2 was the last one, and its support ended on 14 October 2025. Here the version and the machine really do come to the same thing, and this is the one section on this page where replacing hardware is genuinely on the table.

Before that, though, there is a route most people do not know exists. Microsoft's consumer Extended Security Updates programme carries Windows 10 to 12 October 2027. It has conditions: the machine must be on 22H2, and on Home, Pro, Pro Education, Pro for Workstations. There are three ways in, and only one costs anything: at no additional cost if you are syncing your PC Settings; redeem 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points; a one-time purchase of $30 USD or local currency equivalent plus applicable tax.

This is also the one date on this page that has already moved once, which is a useful thing to know about it. Consumer ESU originally ran to October 2026 and now runs a year longer. A page that copied the old date would still return a perfectly healthy result to a link checker while telling you something untrue, which is why we check whether a source still says the value we print rather than whether it still loads.

Macs: Apple publishes no date, and that is the answer#

Apple publishes no end-of-support date for any Mac. There is no equivalent of Google's model list and no equivalent of Microsoft's version table. What Apple publishes is a compatibility list: as of 17 August 2026, the 37 Mac models that can run macOS Tahoe 26. That is the only published fact, so it is the only question that can be answered.

Being off the current macOS is not the same as being unsupported, and this is where most advice on Macs goes wrong in the alarming direction. Apple continues to ship security updates to older macOS branches for some time after a Mac stops being able to run the newest one. What it does not do is tell you for how long, or promise anything about it in advance.

So the honest position on a Mac is narrow: you can find out whether yours runs the current macOS, and you can watch what Apple actually ships. You cannot find out when it stops, because Apple has not said. Anyone giving you a number for a Mac has inferred it, and an inference presented as a policy is the thing this site exists not to do.