Do you like Windows updates so much that you want to get them early? Well, probably not when I put
it like that. But what about getting all the new biggest Windows features before anybody else? And
also having your feedback on those features having more impact than normal on the final release?
I'm talking, of course, about the Windows Insider program, which is basically just opting in to
get beta and other early Windows builds. You may have heard of this because this was how
you could have tested Windows 11 early. But even if you do already know about the
insider program or even are a part of it, stick around, because I'm also going to demystify some
stuff that you probably have wondered about. I'm going to go over the different so-called Windows
insider channels, as well as when you should and should not consider opting in to these early
builds. Also, I'm going to talk about another secret way that you can get some
other early builds that most people don't know about. And I'll put all the timestamps
in the description. So real quick, I'll go over the basics of the insider program.
It's pretty self-explanatory. So it shouldn't take very long. There's actually several different
insider programs for different Microsoft products. The Windows insider program,
of course, being for Windows operating system, where you get early windows builds,
which are basically just incremental upgrades that work towards an eventual public release.
But there's also insider programs for Microsoft Office, Xbox, Visual Studio Code,
and some others. But I'm just going to focus on Windows for this one. In the Windows Insider
program, there's different channels that determine how early you get certain features
that are not in the public release yet. So these are going to be the dev release channel,
which is the earliest. Then there's the beta and then there's the release preview channel.
These channels used to be called Rings, where the dev channel used to be called the fast ring.
And the beta was the slow ring. And the different channels are going to be updated with different
frequencies, generally with the dev channel being the most frequent. And then the release channel,
the least frequent. Now, before I go over the details of the different channels,
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And so with all that being said, let's continue. So let's get into the dev channel. So this one
has the earliest builds. It's kind of like a work in progress for the most part.
So it's not exactly stable. And it could have some stuff in there that could break things. So I would
definitely not recommend installing this on any kind of computer that you use for mission critical
work or anything that you really rely on. Definitely not some kind of work computer.
And this is especially so because you generally can't usually leave the dev
channel and go back to getting regular Windows updates without doing a full clean install
of Windows. I'll talk about that later. But, so I would definitely recommend just doing
the dev channel on like an extra computer where you just really want to experiment with stuff.
One thing that's unique about the dev channel is that new builds are not necessarily tied to any
final public release build. So features just kind of get
added randomly, I guess you could say, and might show up without warning and might even disappear
without warning or never end up in a public release. And also, when a feature gets added to
the dev channel doesn't necessarily mean what order that it's going to end up in public.
So you might have one feature that ends up doing a lot of testing in the dev channel spends there
for a super long time, whereas there might be one feature that is in the dev channel for a
little bit, then goes into a beta release. Because of this, the dev channel builds are
named a little bit differently than the beta release channel or even public release builds.
And Microsoft actually has a webpage where you can see literally all of the Windows
insider builds that have been released for all the different versions of Windows.
It's called the Flight Hub. And flighting is the term they use for running an early build of
Windows. And you can see here that the Dev channel builds just kind of have a general number that
doesn't have like a major or minor build number with a decimal point or anything, whereas the
beta and release channel actually do have the major version of Windows,
which is like the bi-annual version, and then the decimal version, which is like the minor
version of that major build. But the dev channel just kind of has random numbers in there.
Well, not exactly random, but you know what I mean. The dev channel build number doesn't
necessarily have anything to do with where it's going to end up in the public release.
And by the way, I will do a better explanation of the build numbers and stuff in a little bit.
And on the same page, you can actually see that the dev channel is going to get
the most frequent updates. It looks like generally about once a week, but sometimes
more. So now let's talk about the beta channel. And there are several major differences between
the beta channel and the dev channel. So first one being that the beta channel does have builds
that are actually tied to a final public release. So while the dev channel may have features added
into it that are more or less experimental, with no necessarily timeline on when it will be
released. With a beta build, though, any features that are in there pretty much means that
those features are going to almost certainly end up in the next final public release. Now,
another difference is that the beta channel is way more stable than the dev channel.
In fact, on the info page about the different channels, Microsoft even specifically calls
the beta channel reliable. And also it says that beta channel updates have been validated,
which means that basically it's gone through some bug filtering, a certain
level of testing to verify its stability. So you're not going to probably have any
major issues like you could potentially have with the dev channel. If you are someone who likes to
be an early adopter, you may very well choose to use the beta channel on a personal computer, but I
probably still wouldn't do it on anything mission critical, like where you're literally using
it to make money for work and stuff like that, because obviously is way more stable than dev
channel. But that doesn't mean there's not going to be any bugs. I mean, that's the whole
point of a beta channel is to find the bugs before it goes out to everybody publicly.
So just kind of be aware of that. I believe another common use for the beta channel is for
I.T. professionals who maybe work for a company. They handle
migrating and updating all the computers for a company. They may install the beta channel on test
computers to make sure that all the company's software works with upcoming versions of
Windows. And if there's any issues, then they can make sure that it all works before the
final version comes along. Another advantage is if you do use the beta channel and you do
come across bugs or issues, you can give feedback that will be probably more closely looked at.
For example, with the feedback hub, that's Microsoft's thing, where you can submit bug
reports and feedback and stuff and suggestions. They're probably going to be looking more closely
at beta users because there's fewer of them. It's easier to manage them.
And, you know, they want to make sure that they get all these bugs before it goes out in
a release. Now, as for the update frequency, based on the beta channel update history for Windows 10,
it kind of seems like new builds are no more than once a week, but occasionally
there are several weeks between them. So, again, generally less frequent than the
dev channel, of course, but it does look like the updates become a little bit more frequent
the closer to the public release. Now, hold on for a second before we get to the release
preview channel, because apparently there are also some special "internal" channels
that are not available to the public and are used for internal testing by
Microsoft employees. There's barely any details on these internal channels. I literally just read
about them on Wikipedia. So a lot of this is going to be just purely my speculation. But I
thought it would be interesting to mention them. One of these is the Canary Channel,
which apparently is the very first stop any time any brand new code gets written. It
goes into the Canary Channel. It apparently has very little testing, probably extremely
unstable and buggy and pretty much gets updated daily. Then up next is the selfhost channel, so
after a little bit of testing is done, I guess in Canary, it's in the self host channel, which is
used to do some testing before it's even sent to the dev channel. So this is probably just
to make sure that there's no devastating bugs or anything like that. Then the third internal
channel is the Microsoft Channel, which is actually, I think, the most interesting.
It's actually between the dev channel and beta channel. With this, apparently the build gets
rolled out company wide, I guess, to do as much testing as possible to make sure that all the
big bugs and maybe even most bugs are sorted out before even getting to the beta build.
Because, remember, the beta build is supposedly supposed to be reliable. So you would hope so. So
it kind of makes sense that they would roll it out to as many people as possible internally without
actually going public. I also assume this is the stage where they decide which features to put
into which builds and schedule them for eventual public release. And apparently,
those are the only three internal channels that are known, at least according to Wikipedia. So
we can now talk about the final release channel, which is the preview release
channel. And this one is the last stop before an update gets released as a public release.
And what I assume is that any build in the release preview channel theoretically should
be ready for release and that hopefully all bugs have been fixed. But obviously, with anything,
the more people that use a piece of software or certain build, the more likely it is to
find the rare edge cases and rare bugs. So it's just kind of like one final step to
make sure you catch anything that you might have missed, hopefully. And I also believe that the
release preview channel should be at least almost as stable as a final release, another important
thing I want to note is that the release preview channel will also get early minor updates
that are released for a major update after the major update is released. So at this point,
let me explain what the whole thing between major builds and minor builds are. And you might have
even wondered this, even if you just use windows generally and you look at the version of windows
or build you're running, you can now understand what these numbers all mean. So
the major build of a Windows version is just the number to the left of the decimal place.
So these are the big feature updates, the ones that are semi-annual for Windows 10
and are going to be annually for Windows 11. And these are also known as the release version.
So you may also see it called 21H1 - First half of 21. 20H2, that sort of thing. So for example,
all Windows 10 21H1 builds start with 19043 and 20H2 was 19042.
20H1 was 19041 and so on. Now the minor build number is determined by the number to
the right of the decimal place. So these minor builds are basically just little
incremental updates to the big major build. And one important thing to note is that these
minor build versions and minor updates are not just for early test versions of a big release,
and then that's it once it's released. These minor builds are also going to be the patches
that are applied to a major build after the major build initial final version is released.
And these are usually in the form of the monthly patches that Microsoft releases,
usually the second Tuesday of the month called Patch Tuesday. When Patch Tuesday goes out,
then you probably will notice that the minor build version of your Windows version will go up.
And these minor builds are not going to have any new features or anything, though generally
it's just going to have bug fixes, security updates, that sort of thing. Now, also,
remember that I mentioned that the release preview channel, in addition to getting
the early final build of a major release, it will also get slightly early versions of
each minor release after that. So we can see that on this page that lists all the
different preview builds. For example, with Windows 10 21H1, it says that the final build
that was pushed to public was 19043.928 . Now we can actually see that there were more
than one release preview channel builds before the final one. So I guess they
released the release preview and then did fix some stuff before the final one. But more importantly,
notice how after 928, the release preview channel kept getting roughly monthly updates.
And these were generally in the second half of the month after the most recent patch Tuesday
happened. But before the next one, you basically get the next patch Tuesday early. So anyway,
the main thing I want to point out here is that for both the beta and release preview channels,
you're going to not just get a little bit early versions of the major releases,
but also early versions of the minor releases every month. You can see that these were like in
the second half of every month. So that was going to be for the next following patch Tuesday.
So again, for the release preview channel, they wait until the next major version is
just about ready before you get those. And in the meantime, you just get the
minor updates early. So now that you know how the major and minor build versions work,
one reason I wanted to bring all that up is because, like I mentioned at the beginning of
the video, there is actually a secret way that you can get early versions of the minor builds without
even being a member of the Insider program. So like I said, the minor updates are generally
going to be monthly in the second Tuesday of the month patch Tuesday. And these are also the
mandatory updates. So eventually they're going to be auto installed by anyone with Windows.
And again, while the beta and release preview channels get these minor updates about a month
early, there is actually a special window of time between when those channels do get the early
update downloaded and the actual patch Tuesday. Usually around the end of the month, if you
actually go and check manually for updates in Windows, you will generally be offered
an optional update for the early patch. So depending on when you watch this video,
if you go and do that and you see something called an "optional quality update" or "cumulative
update preview", that's exactly what this is. You don't have to of course,
it's not going to auto install or anything, but you can choose to install it. And you can
see at the time I recorded this video. There was one available. So this is just kind of
a cool way you can get minor updates a little bit early between the preview channels and
the public release. Though I will point out that these minor updates almost
never have any new features or anything. There was one exception where Microsoft released
that "News and Interests" widget in a minor update, but that's a very rare exception.
However, this might be good to know if you are experiencing weird issues with windows,
maybe you're coming across a bug and you want to check manually if there's an optional update,
because maybe that next patch will have a fix for the bug you're experiencing.
So it might just be something to try. So anyway, going back to the Windows Insider program,
should you join it and which channels should you join if you do want to? Well,
the point of the video is hopefully you can just decide for yourself at this point
with all this knowledge. Though, I would personally recommend just doing either the
release preview channel or the beta channel, if any. It seems like the release preview channel
updates are stable enough where it's. Basically, just like getting the normal updates early,
and then the beta channel is just even more early, though maybe not as polished as the
release preview. Again with the dev channel, I would definitely recommend against that unless
you really know what you're doing. And the reason, again, is because you generally can't really leave
the dev channel without doing a clean install with the beta and release preview channels.
On the other hand, what you can do is if you go into the Windows insider settings in windows,
you can choose "stop getting preview builds". And what this will do is you will continue to get
the preview update builds until the next major release.
And that's just because you're also going to be getting these security updates in each one.
However, once the next major build is released, then you'll be all synched up and then you'll
stop getting the preview builds. So no matter what insider channel you're in, you can't go backwards
in build numbers without doing a clean install. So definitely keep that in mind. It's all about a
risk tradeoff, where if you do happen to come across some weird bug in the beta version,
for example, and it completely breaks your computer and you want to stop using
the beta builds altogether, then you would theoretically have to wait until the next
major version, which with Windows 11 is only going to be once a year. So
either you hope that the next beta build will have a fix or just do a clean install and then not have
to wait for the next major one. But the idea is that the beta build should at least be pretty
polished where those are not going to be a real concern. But you might come across
rare edge cases in the beta build and then probably even less so in the release preview
build. And another advantage of your release preview build is even if you do decide "Ah I
want to stop getting these", then they're only released a short time before the final one.
So if you do want to leave the insider program, you don't have to wait very long for that. So
that's just all stuff to kind of be aware of and do the calculation for yourself. So with all this
knowledge, you might be wondering, how do you actually go and join the insider program?
Well, it's actually not really hard at all. So what you do is go to the Insider Microsoft
webpage. That's just insider.windows.com, and then you click the register button and it's
going to have you log into your Microsoft account and then agree to some things.
And once you do that on the webpage, you can go back into the Windows settings and
there you go to Update & Security settings and then look for Windows Insider program,
and then you basically just click "Get Started" or whatever and follow all the prompts
and it will have you link a Microsoft account. Now, if you're using a local Windows account to
log into your computer, that's fine. This is not going to link or require you to log in to
your computer with a Microsoft account, it's literally just going to link the Microsoft
account to the Windows insider thing. So after you do that, it'll ask you which
channel you want to join and tell you a little bit about all the stuff we just talked about. I
believe you then have to do a restart before you actually get the insider updates.
But once you do, when you go to check for updates, it should start downloading the
latest insider build for your particular channel. So really, I think that's pretty
much all you have to know about insider builds and Windows updates in general.
Also, thanks again to Mine for sponsoring this video. Be sure to go to SayMine.com
so you can also start reclaiming your data. And of course, you can click the
same link down in the description. If you guys enjoyed this video and found
it useful, definitely give it a thumbs up. Let me know what you think down the comments and
also if you want to subscribe, be sure to click the bell to get notifications, because I only
upload about twice a week. You don't want those to get lost in the rest of your subscriptions.
If you guys want to keep watching, the next video I'd highly recommend
is where I was talking about those AppData folders in windows. And you may have wondered
what exactly those are for. I go into very much detail, and I think you'll be very interested
in some of the stuff you learn there. So definitely check that out. I'll put the
link right there. And thanks so much for watching. I'll see you in the next one.