It's once again that time of the year when Microsoft's Amanda Langowski pens a blog post to outline what's in store for the Windows Insider Program. This time, there are some big changes, as the team is introducing a public Canary Channel. No, this isn't the daily-update internal that you've heard of. This seems a lot like the Dev channel, but for testing Windows 12.

First of all, the Release Preview and Beta Channels are unchanged. Release Preview still gets you the next update that's slated for a public release, and Beta is more reliable than the Dev Channel.

The rebooted Dev Channel

If you're on the Dev Channel today, you're about to be moved into the Canary Channel. In fact, if you don't want to be moved to the Canary Channel, you'll need to do a clean installation of Windows 11.

The Dev Channel is going to get "the latest Windows 11 preview builds", and they'll be in the build 23000 range. That's why you'll need to do a clean installation to go back to Dev. The Canary Channel is for 25000 builds now, and if you're on the Dev Channel, you're already getting those.

The all-new Canary Channel

Microsoft didn't explicitly say that the Canary Channel is for Windows 12 testing; after all, it hasn't even acknlowledged that the new OS exists. However, the builds in this channel will be numbered in the 25000 series, indicating a newer branch than what's coming through the rebooted Dev Channel. It's also worth noting that the blog post didn't use "Windows 11" to describe the Canary Channel at all, and in fact explicitly said that the Dev Channel is getting the latest for Windows 11.

Builds from the Canary Channel won't be tested much, and could come with major issues. Microsoft is saying that right out of the gate. In this channel, you're on the cutting edge.

As for what you can expect, the blog post said platform and API changes, which is mostly under the hood stuff. That's not entirely surprising, and indeed, a lot of this won't be documented.

You probably shouldn't use the Canary Channel

Microsoft is going to release its annual Windows 11 update this fall, and that build will be from the 23000 series. We're expecting Windows 12 next year, so that's presumably what the 25000 series is. But if history can predict the future, it's not worth testing it, at least right now.

Back when the Windows Insider Program was made up of 'rings', there was a 'Skip Ahead' section of the Fast Ring, which very much did a lot of what the Canary Channel is promising right now. It let you skip to the next branch of builds.

The problem is that Microsoft has this bad habit of telling people that they should test out new things, and then not giving them anything fun to play with until they can make a spectacle of announcing them. In other words, you'd get these Skip Ahead builds with platform changes and such, they'd come with a ton of bugs, and there were no new features.

It was all risk and no reward.

Remember, you can opt into these channels at any time. You can, and probably should wait until there's a feature that you actually want to try (that's not released in parallel in the Dev Channel), that's worth sacrificing system stability for.

But again, whatever is actually going to arrive through this build 25000 branch, it's likely not going to show up in previews until Microsoft can make a proper launch announcement.