I'd take that with a big pinch of salt since the shortfall is "unknown". Probably means they're picking up a fuck ton of bot traffic and there's nobody at the wheel over at StatCounter...
this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2026
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I hope they never recover.
I will switch to a computer for work with Linux or MacOS. The current situation with Windows is not OK. You need to get your shit together again basically.
Idk why everyone is always looking at statcounter. I still feel like Cloudflare probably has better data.
Whats up with android and iOS? They are counted, since they have their own colors, but shouldnt they be quite visible? I have a hard time believing there is more linux/macOS than android/iOS out there
Device type of Desktop answers that I think...
Whoopsiedoodles, my bad
Yep, seems about right.
The only thing this does not count are the offline devices. But in todays day and age, how many don't connect to the internet in some way or form?
Offline devices would be either air gapped old windows or stability Linux, probably Debian.
It feels like macOS is somehow over represented there. Specially for a global statistic. In many countries macs are completely residual, where I live I almost know more people using linux than mac.
These are http requests, so it could be inflated from the larger proportion of software engineers using macOS, who also make significantly more requests than average, including in their usage of ai...
Anecdotally, I'm seeing a lot of bot traffic masquerading with a macOS user agent
Makes sense, no commercial site wants to block rich people
MacOS at 20% globally does seem to be extremely high. I would have expected something like 15 at most.
Maybe countries where macs are more popular throw it off. But I'd be surprised if even the US was over 20% for Mac (but not iOS).
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Okay, but StatCounter's graph (edit: here) clearly shows that "unknown" is what's cannibalizing most of that – and this is specifically measuring web traffic.
"Lemmy celebrates the rise of bots polluting web traffic stats because they didn't bother to read the article beyond a misleading headline that reaffirms their biases."
Looking at the included chart (below), I don't think the growth in "unknown" is the primary factor of Window's decline in market share. The chart does show, over the last two data points, that Mac OS and Linux have increased at the same time that Windows has decreased.
This is all but one data point anyway, so it's not fair to draw a long-term conclusion based on that regardless.
Those "last two data points" are two months. For OS X, there's some upward movement the last two months (about 3%, which isn't a lot given it spiked late last year from 8.3% to 14.07% to 8.2% in a span of three points), while Linux is practically flatlined with a very light upward incline just the last month.
To the extent StatCounter is useful to begin with, the Linux point is functionally meaningless while the OS X increase of a few percentage points may or may not be significant; trying to divine a trend from twitches in those two points is reading noise. Look at the "unknown" line, meanwhile, and see how it begins mirroring Windows' decline around mid–late 2025. It rose from 11.3% in September 2025 to 21.5% in June 2026. That represents actual, meaningful, lasting change.
How many Linux users use anti-fingerprinting extensions that prevent sites from seeing their OS? Wouldn't that place them in the "unknown" category?
Yes, that's pretty much what I said in the line of text under the graph.
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I'm not seeing much of an increase there for Mac or Linux. I'm not sure how you drew those conclusions from this graph.
This is a zero sum graph, as market share must add to 100%. You may observe that the one large decrease in Windows market share occurs at the same time as three small increases for Mac OS, Linux, and "unknown".
Nothing else increased. The three small increases must be equal to the Windows decrease.
Hell yeah! bots polluting web traffic in a way that reaffirms my biases! 🥳
Most bots pretend to be Windows/Chrome or iOS/Safari.. just sayin'.
The increase is likely bots that don't even want to pretend to be Windows anymore.
More likely new bots are all being vibecoded and aren't pretending to be anything because everything is stupid now.
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I'm not surprised. Between privacy concerns, forced features, and Linux becoming easier to use, the barrier to switching is lower than it used to be.
I just Minted my old laptop that I last used like.. 2-3 years ago to try out Ubuntu (which didn't go well.) The progress is huge and I'm really very confused on how well things work now, even all my games on Steam?? When did this all happen?? Gonna make the switch on my main PC in few weeks.
Proton has been a huge game changer tho
Even if the numbers are a little off, that's a wonderful sight. Those of us using Linux for decades it feels like the early days of the internet when AOL users came flooding in.
That number seems rather low. I can see that number for overall OS share, including mobile devices, but for desktop I'd expect Windows to be a lot higher.
EDIT: Thinking about it further, if you included mobile devices, then Android would have to be even higher than Windows is here. Either way, these numbers look off.
This graph compares the desktop OS market share split between Microsoft (Windows), Apple (OS X, iOS, macOS), Google (Chrome OS, Android), and what's being reported as "Linux". Notably, it removes the "Other", "Playstation", and "Unknown" values, and re-normalises the rest to 100 (percent). Made by downloading the data from StatCounter
Windows only share of the above.
Apple, Google, Linux shares of the above.
If you guys want to check the numbers and my maths here's the spreadsheet.
What Microsoft does not seem to understand is that you don’t even have to make a GOOD product, you just have to make it better than eating broken glass.
“better than eating broken glass”
Oh, you mean better than Windows Vista Aero.
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Well I can't speak for the whole world but by my Windows usage dropped 100% from 2025 to 2026.
"Unknown" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
It looks like Windows computers is going to unknown. So they are just bad at detecting OS.
Quick add more dogshit unwanted features and spyware to extract the maximum value out of customers over the short term!
Incoming rename to Copilot OS.
Aren't they making a CopilotOS?
I dual boot my AsshairTrimmer with CopilotOS and Arsch btw.
StatCounter lists OS X at 11.89% and macOS at 4.48% for June 2026
What?
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