Staying ahead with the latest AVD enhancements means more speed, better performance, and a consistently smooth user experience. Fabs Solutions brings you the highlights from Microsoft's latest updates — so you can unlock the full potential of your Azure Virtual Desktop environment.

What’s New in Azure Virtual Desktop – October 2025

Azure Virtual Desktop continues to evolve at a rapid pace, and Microsoft delivered several important updates across the platform this month. These enhancements improve performance, tighten security, enhance monitoring, expand app delivery capabilities, and move AVD further toward a Windows App-first future.

Below is a summary of the key updates released in October 2025, along with direct links to the official Microsoft documentation.

1. Windows App – More Feature Parity Improvements

Microsoft continues to refine the Windows App as the primary experience for AVD, with several customer-requested improvements landing this month.

What’s New?

• Custom RDP properties support (initial subset)
• Faster host pool discovery
• Improved multi-session reliability
• Better DPI scaling
• Enhanced sign-in messaging
• Improved OneDrive sync behaviour for multi-session use

Official Microsoft Link:

➡ Windows App – Known Issues / Feature Gaps
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-app/troubleshoot-known-issues-limitations?tabs=windows

2. AVD Agent - Version 1.0.12684.400

App Attach continues to mature and becomes significantly easier to manage with this month’s enhancements.

What’s New?

• Improved session host monitoring agent for faster initial startup
• Shoebox streaming is now fully configurable with support for allowed property filtering.
• Updated Disabled Entra Join health check on Windows Server 2016 to prevent false-positive reports
• App attach now runs conditionally based on third-party provider registration.

Official Microsoft Link:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-desktop/whats-new-agent#version-1012684400

3. SXS Network Stack - Version 1.0.2507.25550

App Attach continues to mature and becomes significantly easier to manage with this month’s enhancements.

What’s New?

• General improvements and bug fixes
• Fixes an issue where UDP connections were falling back to TCP when using Shortpath for managed networks

Official Microsoft Link:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-desktop/whats-new-sxs#version-10250725425

4. App Attach – Intune GA & Performance Improvements

App Attach continues to mature and becomes significantly easier to manage with this month’s enhancements.

What’s New?

• App Attach deployment via Microsoft Intune is now GA
• Faster MSIX mounting on Azure Files Premium
• Updated MSIX Packaging Tool improvements
• Application repair support without full re-packaging

5. RDP Shortpath – Reliability Upgrades

RDP Shortpath receives a major resilience and recovery update.

What’s New?

• Automatic Shortpath fail-back when UDP recovers
• Improved asymmetric network handling
• Better UDP stability for long-distance connections
• Additional telemetry in Azure Monitor

Official Microsoft Link:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-desktop/rdp-multipath

6. FSLogix – October 2025 Release

A new FSLogix release delivers performance enhancements and new troubleshooting capabilities.

What’s New?

• Reduced profile hydration time
• Improved Cloud Cache stability
• New Profile Health Report (Event Viewer)
• Fixes for Office Container OST corruption
• Built-in detection for profile bloat

Official Microsoft Link:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fslogix/overview-release-notes

7. Azure Monitor – Updated AVD Insights Workbook

The AVD workbook in Azure Monitor receives several usability and reporting improvements.

What’s New?

• Host performance heatmaps
• Session duration trend analysis
• FSLogix profile load breakdown
• GPU utilisation reporting (where applicable)

8. Watermarking & Screenshot Prevention Enhancements

Security-focused organisations will benefit from refinements to AVD’s session-protection features.

What’s New?

• Custom branding in dynamic watermarking
• Improved detection for screen-scraping tools
• Reduced client-side performance overhead

9. Azure Files Premium – Profile Storage Enhancements

Azure Files Premium improvements continue to enhance FSLogix performance at scale.

What’s New?

• Increased throughput per TiB
• Lower latency for profile I/O
• Scaling improvements for large (>5,000 user) deployments

Official Microsoft Link:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/files/storage-files-introduction

10. Remote Desktop Client (MSRDC) – Retirement Reminder

Microsoft has reconfirmed the retirement of the classic AVD client.

Key Date:

⛔ 27 March 2026 – Remote Desktop Client reaches End of Life

11. AVD External Identities – Continued Improvements

Microsoft is preparing for General Availability of External Identities for AVD, with more refinements landing this month.

What’s New?

• Improved token refresh behaviour
• More stable cross-tenant access
• Enhanced Conditional Access scenarios

Official Microsoft Link:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/active-directory-external-identities

Summary

October 2025 delivered improvements across every area of Azure Virtual Desktop — client experience, scaling, FSLogix, app delivery, monitoring, and security. As Microsoft continues to shift investment into Windows App and modern identity, organisations should prepare for full adoption in 2026.