Windows Insider Canary Channel

An unstable and undocumented canary channel was added to the Windows Insider program in Mar. 2023. The accompanying chart details benefits and risks of participating in the Windows Insider Program for enterprise customers.

The new canary channel may allow organizations to spot significant changes to the Windows client OS that could make hardware obsolete or necessitate rewriting applications or retraining users. Because the canary channel is closest to the latest internal Microsoft builds, it contains undocumented changes and is less stable than other builds. Problems with canary channel builds will often require reinstallation of the OS. Users of the current Dev channel (remember “Dev” means the channel offers the latest builds in development, and not necessarily a developer-only focused build) may find they have been moved to the canary channel; Dev users may have to reinstall the Windows OS and applications and restore any data and settings from a back up to get back to the latest Dev channel build.