Windows Update Will Start Showing New Insider Channel System to all Windows 11 Users

The new Windows Insider Channel system that made its debut earlier this year is ready to roll out in Windows Update for all Windows 11 users. Soon, non-Insiders interested in joining the program from Windows Update will see the new Experimental and Beta Channel options replacing the previous Canary, Dev, and Beta Channels.

The Windows Insider team said today that the new Insider Channel experience will roll out to all Windows 11 users over the coming weeks. The idea behind the new Channel system was to make it clearer to Insiders what they should expect to test, but I’d say the program has become more confusing than ever with the testing of Windows 11 version 26H1, which is now available across all Insider Channels… even though this update won’t be offered to non-Insiders.

As a refresher, the Experimental Channel is now the place where “new features generally show up first and where your feedback has the most direct impact on what we build,” Microsoft said in April. Insiders on this Channel can also enable or disable specific features via the new Feature flags page on the Windows Insider Program settings page.

The Beta Channel, however, still aims to provide early access to new Windows 11 features that will ship in the coming weeks. However, Microsoft said that it would end controlled feature rollouts (CFRs) on this Channel, though there will still be some A/B testing of new features.

It’s still hard to keep track of what’s happening across all Insider Channels, however. Today, Microsoft released five new builds across the Beta and Experimental Channels (we had a record 7 Insider builds on the same day two weeks ago), but the most notable change is the addition of a new taskbar size setting on the Experimental build 26300.8758. This is part of the ongoing work to make the Windows 11 taskbar, which was rebuilt from scratch, more customizable.