Windows 11, the Fall Update, 23H2, and You (Premium)

Thanks to Microsoft’s non-transparent and ever-changing updating strategies and inability to communicate, we’re unknowingly living in a weird and uncertain new Windows era. And while I continue to struggle with that, weighed down in part by my decades of experience with this process and my strong opinions about what works and what doesn’t, we should at least address the most pertinent question. Which is, what’s happening?

More specifically, what’s happening to Windows 11. In the short term.

Having now spoken to several Microsoft executives and employees, colleagues like Mary Jo, Laurent, and Chris Hoffman, each of whom has their own take on the situation, and Rafael, the greatest living Windows internals expert since Mark Russinovich, I feel like I can provide an answer. It’s not necessarily the answer—another piece of this puzzle will fall into place when Microsoft’s John Cable publishes a promised post offering his company’s official explanation—but it’s answer enough.

And it goes like this.

At a high level, there are two things going on here. When it comes to updating Windows, Microsoft has moved to a system in which new features can be introduced into the product at any time, in sharp contrast to the monolithic release milestones of the past. And in late 2022, the software giant internally pivoted its overreaching strategy around AI. And while that latter change will impact all of Microsoft, in the case of Windows, AI will be seen throughout the product, in the system itself and in apps.

When you tie these two realities together, you arrive at the mess we’re in now, at least as I perceive it. Microsoft has dramatically changed how it updates Windows, blurring the line between Feature Updates (version upgrades) and the regular stream of updates, many of which are new features. And it wants to keep the AI momentum going so badly that it likewise wants to ship new AI-based features as quickly as possible, rather than waiting for the next Feature Update.

Knowing that the next Windows 11 Feature Update, called 23H2, would normally be shipping in preview form next week, you may of course wonder why Microsoft wouldn’t simply align these things and market 23H2 as the AI upgrade for Windows 11. I certainly wonder about this, and that’s true even given my growing understanding of what is happening. However it is very clear that Microsoft cannot release all of what will constitute 23H2 together because parts of it are very much not ready for next week. And so we’re getting this staged release, in which most of the features we consider to be part of 23H2 will ship soon. And others will ship later.

Which, when you think about it, is no different than what happened with the initial Windows 11 release, 21H2. Or last year’s Windows 11 version 22H2. The only real difference is how Microsoft brands or communicates this coming set of releases. And I believe it’s been complicated by Microsoft’s need to get AI into the hands of its customers as quickly as possible. It can’t wait for the rest of 23H2 to catch up: It’s go time.

(Also tied to Microsoft’s schedule weirdness, I think, is the related need to get NPU-based PCs into the ecosystem, and its desire to market its own Surface Studio Laptop 2 as the first of this coming wave. The Intel announcement about its NPU-powered “Meteor Lake” processors will drive a new generation of PCs starting in early 2024. It will be interesting to see whether this upgrade improves PC sales.)

One simple way to look at next week’s preview update—or what Microsoft calls the “September 2023 optional non-security update for Windows 11 version 22H2”—is to compare its new features to those expected in 23H2. And then see what’s there, and what’s missing.

So let’s start with the latter, in part because the list is so short and because it includes the feature causing the single biggest issue that Microsoft is encountering in 23H2. I am referring, of course, to File Explorer.

Anyone who has been testing Windows 11 23H2 in the Beta channel knows what I’m talking about, and for those who are not, I mentioned this in my Digital Decluttering series. Despite a never-ending series of fixes, this new File Explorer is still incredibly buggy and unreliable, and it somehow manages to bog down from a performance perspective when compared to its predecessor. Which is quite a feat, since File Explorer has long had performance issues compared to third-party tools. Which, yes, is inexcusable.

Interestingly, the File Explorer version in what I’ll call the Fall Update—the pre-23H2 release we’re getting next week—does offer many of the features coming in 23H2, like the Gallery view and the Details pane toggle. But it is missing other new features like recommendations in Home, the Backup reminders in the address bar when viewing OneDrive locations, and more. As has often been the case with new Windows 11 features—the new OneDrive that debuted across November and December last year is a great example—we can expect multiple File Explorer updates over time. Both functional updates and reliability updates.

The only other major new 23H2 feature that I cannot see in the Fall Update is the new Microsoft Teams – Consumer experience. In previous Windows 11 versions, Microsoft provided a Chat item alongside Search and Task view in the center of the Taskbar, but this is being removed in 23H2, partially to make room for the new Copilot item, but also due to low engagement. In 23H2, Microsoft will instead pin a shortcut to the renamed Microsoft Teams – Consumer app alongside the File Explorer, Microsoft Edge, and Microsoft Store shortcuts, and remove the integrated Chat functionality. This shortcut will be removable normally (meaning, you can right-click it and unpin it directly), of course. But none of this is present in the Fall Update today: Instead, we see the old Chat experience and in-box Microsoft Teams app.

From an apps perspective, I’m not seeing all kinds of things yet, but these are apps, so they can be updated at any time. Key among the missing as of the time of this writing is the new Outlook, background removal in Photos, and Auto compose in Clipchamp. There may be more, but that’s what I’ve (not) seen.

And that’s it. The rest of the expected 23H2 features—or at least most of them, from what I can tell, no one is perfect—appear to be in this pre-23H2 Fall Update.

And it’s a long list. Sticking just to the important stuff, I do see Windows Copilot in preview form, the Combine buttons and/or hide labels functionality in Taskbar personalization settings, the new Home view in Settings, the new Notifications features (with the new icon next to the clock), the enhanced archive file support, the new Volume mixer in Quick settings, Ink Anywhere, Dev Home, the disk settings improvements (Create a VHD, Create a Dev Drive), Dynamic lighting support, Windows Spotlight customization, and new Wi-Fi settings for viewing security keys and accessing advanced properties.

And on the apps side, I see Windows Backup, Paint (with the new centered image display and background removal), Task manager with an updated Windows 11-style settings page, and Notepad with automatic progress save.

In short, the Fall Update is what I’ve long figured Microsoft would deliver on September 26, as that date aligns with its usual Week D schedule for preview updates, a preview version of Windows 11 version 23H2. But it’s also branded as 22H2 and incomplete, the latter of which is common to all Windows 11 releases so far.

But that branding thing introduces a related question: We’re getting something on October 10, the Patch Tuesday milestone in October. And that something will either be 23H2 or an “October 2023 non-optional non-security update for Windows 11 version 22H2.” Either will be the public version of the “September 2023 optional non-security update for Windows 11 version 22H2” that is the Fall Update. But if it’s the latter, that means that something called 23H2 will come later. Almost certainly on Patch Tuesday in November or December. You know, unless the schedule slips again, most likely because of ongoing issues with File Explorer.

You can test the Fall Update by installing the latest Windows Insider Preview Release channel build. Or, you can stick with 23H2 and test the Beta channel. Or just wait a few days: The preview version of this mess, whatever you want to call it, arrives Tuesday. God help us all.

And God help me: This update and/or 23H2 will necessitate a big round of updates to my Windows 11 Field Guide. It’s going to be a busy couple of months, I bet.