Microsoft just made the Canary builds of Windows 11 a little confusing

Last week, the Windows 11 Canary Channel made a significant jump from 26XXX builds to 27XXX builds (reportedly called “Dilithium”). Besides all the changes mentioned in the release notes, the latest build, 27686, introduced a small adjustment that might seem a bit odd to some Insiders, especially newbies. The Winver dialog and the System > About section now have “Dev” as the Windows version, even though build 27686 is from the Canary Channel.

Microsoft didn’t mention it in the release notes, but according to Brandon LeBlanc, senior program manager on the Windows Insider Program team, the change indicates that your current build is a version under development and not a specific version of Windows 11 or your current Insider Channel.

This change makes sense: The release notes for Windows Preview builds, especially Canary builds, make it very clear that changes “should not be considered specific to a specific version of Windows.” What makes much less sense, however, is that Microsoft refers to Canary builds as “Dev.” While experienced users know that Windows Release and Preview Channel are two different things, Microsoft literally has a channel with the same name. Of course, there are already confused people out there.

Back in its early days, Microsoft had only two channels (then called “rings”): Fast Ring and Slow Ring. Now Insiders have access to four new channels with new features that often appear in “slower” or more stable channels before showing up in Dev and Canary. Plus, you never know if you’ll get lucky and get new features, as most of them are now being rolled out to Windows Insiders in stages. While there’s a clear reason for this approach, it only adds to the overall confusion of the program.

As a reminder, you can access your Insider channel at any time at Settings > Windows Update > Windows Insider.