Windows 11 Field Guide to Get Free Updates for 23H2

As you probably expected, I will be updating my Windows 11 Field Guide to fully document all of the new features in Windows 11 version 23H2. This will include tons of new content—including some chapters for topics like Copilot, Windows Backup, and more—and several hundred new screenshots because of all the top-level user interface changes.

The question, of course, is timing: There are a lot of new features to document here, which is always difficult and time-consuming enough, but Microsoft is also screwing around with the schedule, which makes it even more difficult for me. So let’s step through the timing of things first, forgoing my usual commentary on these matters:

September 26. Most 23H2 features became available as part of a Week D preview update for Windows 11 version 22H2. The issue? Microsoft is using its random Controlled Feature Release (CFR) deployment scheme, so users might see different mixes of features on different PCs.

October 10. As part of its Week B “Patch Tuesday” release schedule, most 23H2 features will be pushed to all PCs running Windows 11 version 22H2 via a non-optional security update. Put another way, this is the stable version of the September 26 preview update. Sadly, Microsoft will continue using CFR deployment, so the mix of new features you see can vary.

November 14. “Most” of the CFR-ed features from the October 10 security update should be “broadly available” to all users by this date, Microsoft says.

Later. Sometime later, Microsoft will release the Windows 11 2023 Update to all PCs running Windows 11 version 22H2, which will upgrade the OS to version 23H2. Because this will be delivered as an enablement package (eKB), it will be made available immediately to all users, without a CFR-staggered release of new features. That said, this release won’t necessarily follow the normal Week D preview/Week B stable release schedule. If it does, 23H2 will be available in preview form on November 28 and in stable on December 12. But because of the holidays in both cases, I’m wondering if both releases won’t happen earlier, or whether a preview release is even required. 23H2, after all, is just an eKB. (With only one known new feature, Microsoft Teams (free).)

Basically, we’re looking at November 28 at the earliest and December 12 at the latest for all the new features to be broadly available for everyone.

I can’t wait for those dates, of course: I need to get writing now. And that means that I need multiple PCs that have the 23H2 bits on them, all of them, which is difficult because of the CFR stuff. To get there, I have enrolled multiple PCs in the Windows Insider Preview’s Release Preview channel. But, again, because of CFRs, I currently have a weird mix of configurations. Some of my Release Preview channel PCs are still on 22H2, for example, but have all the features (including Copilot). Two have already upgraded to 23H2, which is ideal, but one of them does not yet have Copilot (which is not ideal). This kind of uncertainty makes my life difficult in many ways, but in particular for the book.

Here’s what I’m going to do. I have various projects to tie up related to my 2023 digital decluttering work, and I hope to finish most of that before we leave for Mexico City on Friday, October 13. (We’ll see.) We will be away for three weeks, and I am going to try and update the book with 23H2 content as much as possible during that time. (For some reason, these trips are curiously productive times for me, perhaps because there are fewer distractions.) My hope is that by waiting a bit, my Release Preview PCs will all get caught up with the CFR-blocked features so I can write to (and take screenshots of) a consistent set of experiences.

I’m not sure yet how I will release the new content, and that means I’m also not sure when. I could just do it piecemeal, of course, one chapter at a time, as is usually the case. But I may wait until there’s some core set of updated/new chapters to publish all at once. I’ll need to get further into it before I know for sure, but I will likely be updating the book well past our November 7 return home. Which is fine, when you consider Microsoft’s schedule. Ideally, I “finish” the major updates by the time 23H2 is broadly available (again, November 28 at the earliest and December 12 at the latest). I think that will happen.

Whatever the schedule, these updates will come to both the ebook on Leanpub and the web version of the book here on Thurrott.com, the latter of which is free for Premium members.

Thanks!