Windows 11 preview gets even more confusing

Microsoft launched its Insider program years ago and it was a brilliant idea. It gave users the opportunity to test software like Windows in advance and gave Microsoft important feedback. But things have been getting more and more confusing for a while now.

Insider program celebrates its 10th birthday in autumn

The Windows Insider program is celebrating its tenth anniversary this fall, as Microsoft announced it at the end of September 2014 together with Windows 10. It can and must be called a success story, but for a while now it has been difficult, if not impossible, to keep track of where and how which functions are offered. There are now various channels, versions and builds or sub-builds, and it is not always easy even for professionals to understand which functions are available in the individual builds.

But at Microsoft they are obviously thinking “Hold my beer, that’s still not complicated enough” and have made a change that makes everything even worse: Because how Neowin reported that Microsoft has made a jump in the build version number from 26XXX to 27XXX in the Canary channel of Windows 11, which is a significant change. So far, so good. If you look at the build via “winver” or via the system overview, you will find the version “Dev” there, even though the recently distributed build 27686 comes from the Canary Channel.

Brandon LeBlanc, Senior Program Manager in the Windows Insider Program, has already commented on this and writes: “The ‘Dev’ here does not stand for the channel, but is intended to indicate that this is a pre-release version of Windows 11 that is currently under development.”

Dev build but not dev channel

So Microsoft’s intention here is to clear up the confusion and highlight that a Canary build is a pre-release version. But given that there is also a “Windows Dev Channel,” using “Dev” in “Windows Canary Channel” is probably not a particularly smart move.