How long is it on for? Unless you’re turning it on for minutes at a time, I just can’t see how it would never have time to download things in the background.

The only way I can see this really happening is if you’ve a) got obscenely slow internet or b) have all networks listed as metered, which would indeed prevent automatic updates (unless you specify otherwise.)

Might be a good idea to dig into your settings, because the age of needing to babysit windows updates has been gone for years now.