Windows 365 Switch Enters Public Preview

Microsoft announced that Windows 365 Switch, which lets you switch between your local and cloud PCs, is now available in public preview.

“Windows 365 Switch provides the ability to easily move between a Windows 365 Cloud PC and the local desktop using the same familiar keyboard commands, as well as a mouse-click or a swipe gesture,” Microsoft’s Christiaan Brinkhoff writes in the announcement post. “Windows 365 Switch enables a seamless experience from within Windows 11 via the Task view feature.”

To access the public preview, you need to enroll in the Windows Insider Beta channel on your Cloud PC (or Dev, though Microsoft says that Beta is “preferred”). After the latest build is installed, you then need to enroll in the Windows Insider Beta channel on your local PC too. Then, install the Windows 365 app from the Microsoft Store (or, in managed environments, IT admins can auto-download it to desktops using Intune). And then … you wait. Apparently, it takes “a few hours” before Switch is available on your PC.

After running through the simple Switch first-run wizard, Task view on your local PC will notify you that you can now use it to switch to your Cloud PC.

But you can always just mouse-over Task view and click the “Connect to Windows 365” tile at the bottom of the screen that appears. You can likewise move back from the Cloud PC to the local PC using Task view on the Cloud PC.

You can learn more about Windows 365 Switch from the Microsoft Learn website.