Microsoft is Unifying its Consumer Copilot App and Microsoft 365 Copilot into a Single App

Microsoft announced this morning that it’s preparing to unify its separate Copilot apps into a single app that supports both personal Microsoft accounts and work or school accounts. In the coming days, consumers using the existing Microsoft Copilot app will be upgraded to the new unified app. This isn’t new, but some consumer features such as group chats and podcasts are being discontinued as part of the transition.

The Microsoft 365 Copilot app is also being updated, and it will be rebranded to “Microsoft Copilot app.” It will continue to support both personal Microsoft accounts and Microsoft Entra accounts, and each account type will activate a different background color.

This isn’t explicitly clear in Microsoft’s announcement, but my understanding is that the Microsoft 365 Copilot app is evolving into the unified Copilot app that will also roll out to consumers currently using the existing Microsoft Copilot app. This unified Copilot app will have an account switcher to separate the work and personal experiences, but consumers will get free access to Copilot Chat, an experience that’s currently only available with select Microsoft 365 business subscriptions.

Overall, this looks a lot like how Microsoft unified its two separate Teams apps on Windows 11 into a single app for both personal and work and school accounts. What also caught my eye in Microsoft’s announcement is that the company said that the unified Copilot app will let users “access Word, Excel, Outlook, other Microsoft 365 apps, files and content directly from the app, so you can move from chat to your favorite Microsoft apps easily.”

To me, it sounds like Microsoft is bringing back the functionality of the all-in-one Office app, which was later rebranded to “Microsoft 365 app”, and later to “Microsoft 365 Copilot app.” I think this change will make a big difference on mobile, as the current version of the Microsoft 365 Copilot app (previously the all-in-one “Office app”) can create new Office documents, but it lost the ability to open or edit existing documents a year ago.

Microsoft said that the transition ot the new Copilot app will be a gradual process that will start this week with a subset of Windows Insiders. “The capabilities that make the case for why we’re doing this come later, and the company will have more to share soon. This milestone is the starting line, not the finish line,” the company said today.

On mobile, consumers using the existing Microsoft Copilot app will need to download the new unified Copilot app later this month, but they will keep their existing chats and content. The Microsoft 365 Copilot app, however, will become the new unified app and see navigation changes, a new app icon, and free access to Copilot chat. The worldwide rollout of the unified Copilot desktop apps for Windows and macOS will kick off in mid-September.