I’m Going to Make a Windows 11 New Feature Tracker

Two weeks ago, Microsoft switched the build number sequencing for the Dev channel in the Windows Insider Program, indicating that it was moving on to test new features coming in the next version of Windows. But in what I believe to be a unique, if not unprecedented, move, it didn’t reveal what that version of Windows was. That is, instead of revealing that Dev channel was moving forward to Windows 11 version 25H2, as most suspect, or perhaps even Windows 12, these builds are still “based on Windows 11 version 24H2.” For now.

This shift triggered me to do something I should have done long ago. I went back to last September and (re)examined the pre-release Windows 11 version 24H2 builds that Microsoft delivered to PCs enrolled in the Dev channel only. I chose the Dev channel because that’s where Microsoft began testing major new Copilot+ PC features like Recall and Click to Do, in November. And that’s when I switched my Snapdragon X-based Surface Laptop 7 over to the Dev channel specifically so I could test those new features. Which I’ve been doing ever since. Anyway, my goal was to list the major new features that Microsoft announced in each build and then document when–or if–they had reached stable (or what Microsoft sometimes calls the General Availability channel).

I was surprised by what I found.

There are (or were, at the time of that writing) over 15 major new Windows 11 features that had never shipped in stable. And that’s out of dozens if not hundreds of new features tested and then shipped in stable.

I have often discussed–and complained about–the chaos caused by this constant churn, but I was also apparently trying to ignore a lot of it, too: This is a far greater volume of change than even I had expected to find. And that’s relatively ominous when you realize that I only looked at the Dev channel–and not at the Canary, Beta, or Release Preview channels–and that my list of tested/released features was, by design, incomplete. Also, Microsoft takes most of each December off, and so there were no new features in January. The amount of change in Windows 11 over just those five months (excluding January) in rather astonishing.

But I mentioned chaos. We’re not just getting new features every month. We’re getting new features in the most random of ways, so it’s no longer possible to know what you’ll see when you sign in to any given PC. Among the many issues in understanding what’s new in Windows 11 is that Microsoft deploys new features via a random generator it calls Controlled Feature Release (CFR), so it’s like spinning a roulette wheel and seeing what happens. There are new features delivered in cumulative updates in Windows Update, in preview and stable form. There are new features delivered in apps in the Microsoft Store. And then there’s Copilot+ PC, a new breed of PC for which Microsoft provides unique Windows 11 features, creating a new pseudo-SKU (like Windows 11 Home or Pro). Worse, there are Snapdragon X- and x64-based Copilot+ PCs, and they get new features at different times.

Yep. Chaos.

I spent hours putting together my incomplete list of Windows 11 features, and I was happy to put it to bed and move onto something–anything–else. And yet in the back of my brain, I wanted to do more. I wanted to make a more complete list of Windows 11 features, perhaps look at the builds Microsoft released in the other channels in the Windows Insider Program during the same time frame. And the many app updates, with new features, that were similarly tested then. I knew it would take time, and that it would be a lot of work. But I figured I would get to it eventually.

Briefly, it appeared that Microsoft would spare me from this effort. Just two days after I published my 6,000-word article detailing that incomplete list of tested/released Windows 11 features, Microsoft came out of nowhere and published something it called a Windows roadmap. This was to be a list of new features coming to Windows 11 with descriptions of each and estimated release dates. Oh, thank God. This company, which is terrible at communicating, was finally learning how to communicate something useful and necessary to its customers.

Nope.

As I quickly discovered, Microsoft’s Windows Roadmap is horribly incomplete. Maybe it gets better in time, I don’t know. I mean, it can only get better. But it’s clear that we can’t trust this company to correctly document what it’s doing with Windows 11.

This isn’t philanthropic on my part, I have needs. I have this book, the [Windows 11 Field Guide](https://www.thurrott.com/category/books/windows-11-field-guide). I struggle to keep it updated with all the changes Microsoft is making to Windows 11, but maybe that would be easier if I actually knew what was happening. And I have to figure out some kind of new edition shift post-24H2, which is what I believe we’re now testing in the Dev channel.

Is this is a new book? A new edition? Do I make a Copilot+ PC book and/or add-on volume? These are real questions, as the book I do have right now has gotten far too long. I need to get to a place where this book, or whatever book, is both useful and concise.

Anyway, I’m going to work on this. And try to make the list useful and concise, too. Let me see what I can come up with, but I think this will be something I republish each Patch Tuesday, or perhaps every two weeks because of the interim preview updates.

More soon: Today is Patch Tuesday, after all.