Overview
- Microsoft announced Friday that it will merge the Dev and Canary rings into a single Experimental channel and end gradual A/B rollouts in the Beta channel.
- A new Feature Flags page in Settings will let Experimental users switch specific announced features on or off without using third‑party tools like ViVeTool.
- The company is adding an in‑place upgrade option so most testers can change channels or leave the program without wiping their PCs when staying on the same Windows core version.
- The Experimental channel will include a Future Platforms track for the earliest builds that are not tied to a retail release, and those installs will still require a clean install.
- Current Canary users on 29500‑series builds will move to Experimental (Future Platforms) while 28000‑series builds shift to Experimental (26H1), with changes starting in the coming weeks.