Channeling the Windows Insider Program (Premium)

As a Windows enthusiast, I cheered the arrival of the Windows Insider Program, which made beta testing transparent and open. And I of course rued its decline in the years since, as Microsoft broke its promises to Insiders by ignoring feedback and forcing unwanted A/B testing on us. There used to be an understanding that when you enrolled a PC into a particular Insider channel, you were testing a particular thing, a specific version of Windows. But those days are long gone, and the Insider Program has clearly suffered a massive decline in engagement. It’s a horrible thing for the company to have done to its biggest fans.

I clearly explained my distress with the state of the Insider Program back in December, when I formally observed—I had been discussing this problem for months before that in podcasts—that the Windows Insider Program was now, for many, a one-way, dead-end street. That is, because the Dev and Beta channels no longer map to a specific Windows version, as they had in the past, it was no longer possible to use the mechanism in Windows Settings to automatically unenroll a PC from the program as is the case when you are testing a specific Windows version: because Dev and Beta never line up with stable, there was no way out.

Well, you could always nuke the PC from orbit, so to speak, by creating Windows install media and doing a clean install. But even that fairly radical solution was—and still is—denied to the hardy few using Windows on Arm, because Microsoft doesn’t make Windows on Arm ISOs available publicly, so you can’t create install media. (Yes, you can use unofficial ISOs, if you can find them.)

Microsoft did recently offer some Windows Insiders an out when it announced a so-called “off-ramp” for those in the Beta channel only: between February 23 and March 8, Insiders with PCs in the Beta channel can use the built-in mechanism in Windows 11 to get back on stable. That’s nice, but temporary solutions are just that, temporary. And those on Dev are still in the lurch.

With all that as a backdrop, I viewed today’s news—the addition of yet another Windows Insider Program channel, Canary—with what I think of as pragmatic skepticism. I cannot for the life of me imagine why the program needs another channel. And I find it hard to believe that the mismanagement that led to the program’s downfall is in any way fixed with its addition.

But I want to be fair. And with that in mind, let’s really think about what’s happening here.

Last year, Microsoft instituted the changes that I complained about above, disconnecting the Dev and Beta channels from a shipping release of Windows. Instead, these channels are now used to test features that may or may not make it into a future version of Windows. Features added to the Dev channel are ostensibly the furthest away from fruition and could be canceled. Features added to Beta are a bit further along, and their appearance in this channel ostensibly means they’re passed some bar. And features added to Release Preview are almost certainly going to appear in the next version of Windows (the next feature update).

This doesn’t sound too bad, assuming you ignore what really happened last year. New features rarely made the logical evolution from Dev to Beta to Release Preview to stable. Sometimes features were added to Beta first. Sometimes features debuted in stable first, with no (!) testing at all. Beta was inexplicably split into two sub-groups, some of which got new features and some of which didn’t. And Microsoft isn’t using the Insider Program just for formal feature updates—e.g. new versions—anymore: there are now interim updates that add new features to Windows, called Moments internally, and these are sailing through the Insider program as well. It’s a mess.

And it’s about to get messier.

Against all reason, Microsoft has decided that what the Windows Insider Program needs is more channels, so there will now be three channels, not two, that do not map to a specific release. Only the Release Preview channel does, though in this context the word release means “the next milestone at which new features reach stable; this can be a formal feature update or a random interim update that adds new features.” I’m not quoting Microsoft there, just the truth.

According to Microsoft, the Beta channel hasn’t changed either. Left unsaid is that A/B testing, where some users get new features and some don’t, has been a big part of that channel. But I take unchanged to mean unchanged, so I assume that will continue.

The Dev channel is being rebooted, a term that made me smile ruefully. “New ideas and long lead features” will be tested here, and you can expect “rough edges and low stability.” Fair enough.

And then there’s the Canary channel, which is new. Canary is for those that wish to experience potential new Windows features as early as possible. These builds will be unstable, and I find it humorous and sad that they will be accompanied by “limited to no documentation,” given that documentation has always been the Insider Program’s biggest problem. But this just means no blog posts in most cases, so those folks are really on their own.

Microsoft claims further that these changes are necessary so that it can “deliver continuous innovation to Windows 11,” which is how it describes the addition of interim new features between traditional (and annual) feature updates. But again, it’s hard to understand why another channel was required for this.

And then there are the nuances to consider.

First, it’s likely that many Insiders will want to change channels. You can only do so in one direction, however: those enrolled in the Beta channel can only move upstream (downstream?) to Dev. (Or, as Microsoft puts it, you “can’t switch to a channel that is receiving builds with lower build numbers.”)

Second, those who are currently in Dev are being automatically pushed into Canary. You “will need to do a clean installation of Windows 11 to make the switch” if you don’t like that. (PCs that are managed by organizations will not be pushed from Dev to Canary unless the organization allows it via policy. I have to believe that the number of such PCs is tiny.)

Third, for people like me who actually write about Microsoft and Windows for a living, this new system is kind of a nightmare because the firm will not be documenting what’s in each new Canary build. It’s a bit unreasonable to expect writers and reviewers to keep PCs on hand for this testing, not to mention the difficulty of finding new features on our own. So that will be interesting.

Basically, I don’t get it.

This situation kind of reminds me of an observation I made years ago about people and the decisions they make. Sometimes people do as you would. Sometimes they do something you wouldn’t do, but you understand why they made whatever choice. And sometimes people do things that categorically just don’t make sense in any context.

This change feels like that latter case and I have a hard time seeing how this will drive more or better engagement or improve Windows in any material way. But I’ll give it some time to see how things transpire.