Long before Taco Tuesday became part of the pop-culture vernacular, Tuesdays were synonymous with security — and for anyone in the tech world, they still are.  Patch Tuesday, as you most likely know, refers to the day each month when Microsoft releases security updates and patches for its software products — everything from Windows to Office to SQL Server, developer tools to browsers.

The practice, which happens on the second Tuesday of the month, was initiated to streamline the patch distribution process and make it easier for users and IT system administrators to manage updates.  Like tacos, Patch Tuesday is here to stay.

In a blog post celebrating the 20th anniversary of Patch Tuesday, the Microsoft Security Response Center wrote: “The concept of Patch Tuesday was conceived and implemented in 2003. Before this unified approach, our security updates were sporadic, posing significant challenges for IT professionals and organizations in deploying critical patches in a timely manner.”

Patch Tuesday will continue to be an “important part of our strategy to keep users secure,” Microsoft said, adding that it’s now an important part of the cybersecurity industry.  As a case in point, Adobe, among others, follows a similar patch cadence.

Patch Tuesday coverage has also long been a staple of Computerworld’s commitment to provide critical information to the IT industry. That’s why we’ve gathered together this collection of recent patches, a rolling list we’ll keep updated each month.

In case you missed a recent Patch Tuesday announcement, here are the latest six months of updates.

For March, Patch Tuesday delivers fixes for 83 vulnerabilities

Microsoft’s March Patch Tuesday release addresses 83 vulnerabilities across Windows, Office, SQL Server, Azure, and .NET — with two publicly disclosed zero-days affecting SQL Server and .NET (though neither is being actively exploited in the wild.) Six additional vulnerabilities spanning the Windows Kernel, Graphics Component, SMB Server, Accessibility Infrastructure, and Winlogon are flagged as “Exploitation More Likely.”

The most significant change this month is the introduction of Common Log File System (CLFS) hardening with signature verification, which will affect how Windows handles log files across the operating system. More info on Microsoft Security updates for March 2025.

February’s Patch Tuesday release fixes 59 flaws, including 6 being exploited

The company’s Patch Tuesday release for February addresses 59 CVEs across the company’s product family — roughly half the volume of January’s 159 patches. Six vulnerabilities, affecting Windows Shell, MSHTML, Desktop Window Manager, Remote Desktop, Remote Access, and Microsoft Word, are already being actively exploited. (All five Critical-rated CVEs target Azureservices rather than Windows, however.) 

Both Windows and Office get a “Patch Now” recommendation, with CISA setting a March 3 enforcement deadline for all six exploited vulnerabilities. Two new enforcement timelines also take effect in April: Kerberos RC4 deprecation (CVE-2026-20833) and Windows Deployment Services hardening (CVE-2026-0386). More info on Microsoft Security updates for February 2026.

For January, Patch Tuesday starts off with a bang

The first Patch Tuesday release of 2026 addresses 112 CVEs across Microsoft’s product portfolio, including eight rated critical and three zero-day vulnerabilities. One zero-day (CVE-2026-20805), an information disclosure flaw in the Desktop Window Manager, is already under active exploitation, prompting CISA to add it to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog with a remediation deadline of Feb. 3, 2026. (Note: 95 of the vulnerabilities affect Windows.) More info on Microsoft Security updates for January 2025.

Ho ho ho! December’s Patch Tuesday delivers three zero-days

The December Patch Tuesday update addresses three zero-days (CVE-2025-64671, CVE-2025-54100, and CVE-2025-62221) but includes surprisingly few total patches (just 57). Notably, Microsoft has not published any critical updates for the Windows platform this month. That said, given the zero-days, we recommend a “Patch Now” release schedule for Windows and Microsoft Office. More info on Microsoft Security updates for December 2025.

Be thankful: November’s Patch Tuesday has just one zero-day

This November Patch Tuesday release offers a much reduced set of updates, with just 63 Microsoft patches and (only) one zero-day (CVE-2025-62215) affecting the Windows desktop platform. Windows desktops this month require a “Patch Now” plan, and while the severity of these security vulnerabilities is less than it was in October, the testing requirements are still extensive. More info on Microsoft Security updates for November 2025.

For October’s Patch Tuesday, a scary number of fixes

Microsoft this week released 175 updates affecting Windows and Office and .NET, including server-based updates for Microsoft SQL Server and Exchange server. There are also four zero-day fixes (CVE-2025-24052, CVE-2025-24990, CVE-2025-2884 and CVE-2025-59230), leading to a “Patch Now” recommendation for Windows.

General support for Windows 10 ended Oct. 14, with Microsoft advising: “At this point technical assistance, feature updates and security updates are no longer provided. If you have devices running Windows 10, we recommend upgrading them to Windows 11.” More info on Microsoft Security updates for October 2025.

Businesses love that they can use AI to replace those pesky, expensive developers. For example, Atlassian just laid off 10% of its workers, about 1,600 jobs, to throw more money into AI. Block (formerly Square) CEO Jack Dorsey recently announced he was cutting 4,000 jobs, almost 40% of the company’s staff, saying the intelligence tools we’re creating and using…”are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company.” 

New? I think not. Businesses have been firing people to become more profitable since Ea-nāṣir of Ur let his copper quality assurance engineer go.

What’s that — AI is different, you say? It really contributes to a business’s bottom line while maintaining high standards. But does it, really? Let’s check in over at Amazon to see how AI is working there.

First, Amazon, like so many other companies, is laying people off left and right — 30,000 so far in the last six months. “This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before,” wrote Beth Galetti, Amazon’s senior vice president of People Experience and Technology. This means Amazon could “be organized more leanly.” 

In plain English, that means they’re firing people.

Amazon might yet regret that move. Multiple Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Amazon retail outages have prompted an internal crackdown on how generative AI (genAI) is allowed to touch production code. What’s’ that line about the horse and the barn door?

It started in mid‑December, when an internal AWS AI coding agent called Kiro was allowed to make live changes to a customer‑facing cost management system. Kiro decided the best fix was to “delete and recreate the environment,” triggering a roughly 13‑hour outage that hit the AWS Cost Explorer service in parts of mainland China.

Amazon has insisted the root cause was “user error” and misconfigured access controls. They argued that the same problem could have happened with any developer tool, not just AI. Internally, AWS characterized the disruption as “extremely limited,” stressing that core compute, storage, database, and AI services were not affected.

That could be true. People have been making mistakes and writing sloppy code long before AI got into the programming mix. 

But (surprise!) the December failure wasn’t an isolated case. There have been at least two production outages in recent months, where Amazon AI coding tools can take some of the blame. Internally, those outages were described as “small but entirely foreseeable.”

The root cause was that AI was effectively treated as an extension of a human operator and granted operator‑level permissions. That’s just stupid. You never give someone —or something — system administration privileges unless they absolutely need it and you completely trust them. Neither was true in this case. So, it was that this combination of high privileges and no supervision blew up.

Amazon insists it was human error. Yes, it was. The error was humans putting too much trust in AI. This will only happen more and more often as we replace people who know what they’re doing with often clueless AI agents and bots.

But, wait! There’s more. AI failures have spread beyond AWS infrastructure to Amazon’s retail storefront. In early March, multiple AI-assisted blunders resulted in four — count ’em four! — major incidents. One led to a six-hour outage.

Amazon had had enough. Amazon Senior Vice President Dave Treadwell acknowledged that “GenAI tools supplement or accelerate production change instructions, leading to unsafe practices.”  Why? Amazon AI safeguards “are not yet fully established.”

You know, maybe it’s just me, but before firing a ton of people, I’d make sure that 1) AI could do their jobs and 2) I had a way of ensuring that I could spot, track, and repair AI errors before things go awry. You know, safeguards.

For now, Amazon has a new AI rule for the next 90 days: junior and mid-level engineers now need senior sign-off on any AI-assisted production changes. They’ll also be resetting their code practices and re‑emphasizing traditional safeguards. Engineers in the e‑commerce group have been told to attend normally optional weekly meetings focused on recent outages and new rules around generative‑AI‑driven deployments.

Publicly, Amazon has pushed back against the narrative that AI agents themselves “caused” the outages. Instead, it has been reframing these failures as classic access-control and process failures. Company spokespeople have repeatedly said the incidents were user error and coincidence, stressing that they have “no evidence” that AI tools make mistakes more often than traditional software developers.

Amazon’s top brass is missing the point. Of course, humans must take the blame. If Amazon executives had a clue, they might recall that back in 1979, an IBM training manual stated, “A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision.” Unfortunately, from the top down, Amazon is insisting that AI be used even when, as has become apparent, it doesn’t work that well.

Amazon’s engineers know that. They’ve told The Guardian that they must use AI and “that we have to go faster, this will make us go faster, and that speed is the number one priority.” The result according to another Amazon employee is “This pressure to use [AI] has resulted in worse quality code, but also just more work for everyone.”

How does the saying go? Oh yeah, “You can have two out of three: fast, cheap, or good.” For Amazon AI may be fast and cheap, but it’s failing to be good. 

To get true productivity out of AI, you need to double and triple check its work. This is a lesson that not only Amazon needs to learn, but all businesses suffering from the hallucination that AI is ready to replace programmers. 

It’s not. It’s that simple.

Microsoft is undergoing a regime change that could have a direct impact on its core business.

Rajesh Jha, EVP for experiences and devices, which covers Microsoft 365 and Windows, has announced his retirement, and a succession plan.

Jha will “transition out” on July 1 but remain in an advisory capacity. Interestingly, the company is appointing four EVPs to take over his duties: Longtime Microsoft alums Perry Clarke, Charles Lamanna, and Pavan Davuluri, and LinkedIn head Ryan Roslansky. They will all report directly to CEO Satya Nadella.

The move comes as Redmond has been actively repositioning itself as AI-first, and pushing hard into AI assistants, notably Microsoft Copilot. Recognizing the fervor around Claude Cowork, which stoked fears of a ‘SaaSpocalypse’ after it was rolled out in January, Microsoft recently intorduced an optional Copilot Cowork AI, based on Anthropic’s wildly-popular AI agent.

Coalescing around AI

“Rajesh Jha retiring gives Microsoft the chance to reshape and refocus its leadership over internal products while fulfilling an established roadmap,” said Scott Bickley, advisory fellow at Info-Tech Research Group.

Jha has been a mainstay at the company for more than 35 years, during which time it has rolled out Azure, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Copilot, all of which are now cornerstones of the tech giant’s portfolio.

In a blog post about his retirement, Jha emphasized Microsoft’s “great momentum,” and said that over the next few months, his team will work together to “finalize the full cascade of details” required with this kind of transition. “This includes aligning operating rhythms, decision ownership, and details on the future org structure, all so we’ll be fully aligned and ready to run at the start of FY27,” he said.

The new guard

Jha’s four replacements have significant experience within Microsoft, and with its expanding suite of AI-powered products. Here’s a quick breakdown.

Pavan Davuluri

Davuluri has been with Microsoft for 25 years, working across PC hardware, Surface, Windows, and silicon. Most recently, he served as president of Windows + Devices, where he led teams responsible for the strategy, design, and delivery of Windows commercial and consumer products, including cloud, platform, OS, apps, silicon, devices, and security. The division also oversees the supply chain and manufacturing of Microsoft hardware.

On his LinkedIn profile, Davuluri outlines some takeaways from his decades as a “product maker,” notably the value of end-to-end thinking and product differentiation.

“Windows is evolving into an agentic OS, connecting devices, cloud, and AI to unlock intelligent productivity and secure work anywhere,” he wrote in a recent X post. He later responded to subsequent criticism from developers on the company’s “weird direction” and their calls for reliability, performance, and ease of use.

“We care deeply about developers,” he insisted, adding that his team takes in “a ton of feedback.” However, he acknowledged, “we know we have work to do on the experience, both on the everyday usability, from inconsistent dialogs to power user experiences.”

Charles Lamanna

Lamanna has spent 13 years at Microsoft, joining when the tech giant acquired his cloud monitoring startup, MetricsHub, in 2013. Prior to being promoted to EVP, he served as president of the business and industry Copilot division.

Lamanna has been behind Microsoft’s agentic AI push from the beginning, helping evolve Microsoft Copilot and development tool Copilot Studio, with which users can create custom AI agents. He has overseen the design, development, and engineering of AI-powered apps, autonomous agents, and low-code platforms, including Dynamics 365 and Power Platform.

According to Microsoft, under Lamanna’s leadership, Power Apps has become a “market leader” used by 25 million monthly users. Dynamics 365 is also “one of the largest public cloud-hosted SaaS solutions globally,” used by more than 400,000 organizations worldwide.

He also helped develop Microsoft Azure.

Ryan Roslansky

Roslansky has been with LinkedIn for nearly 17 years, roughly six of those as CEO. In June 2025, he was tapped by Microsoft for a dual role leading Microsoft Office and M365 Copilot. He also still serves as head of LinkedIn, which Microsoft bought for $27 billion in 2016.

Roslansky has been reporting to Jha and Nadella, and is responsible for Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and M365 Copilot apps. Under his leadership at LinkedIn, he more than doubled the company’s annual revenue and its membership (which is now around 1.2 billion). Under his leadership, M365 Copilot continues to “scale rapidly,” now with more than 100 million active monthly users, according to Microsoft.

“Roslansky‘s success in building LinkedIn as a platform demonstrates the potential to have similar success with M365,” Hyuon Park, CEO and chief analyst at Amalgam Insights, commented when his Microsoft appointment was announced last year.

Perry Clarke

Clarke has spent more than two decades at Microsoft, according to his LinkedIn profile, most recently serving as president of M365 Core. He has worked on M365 for nearly 10 years, and previously helped run Exchange Mailbox Server.

Unlike his colleagues, Clarke doesn’t have much of an online or social presence.

Four heads to replace one?

It’s unclear what responsibilities will be doled out to each of Jha’s four successors. Having so many cooks in the proverbial tech kitchen could cause some directional confusion, but some industry watchers say it may be a necessary move.

The ecosystem surrounding Copilot, Windows, Office, and Microsoft 365 has expanded so much in terms of size and complexity that it’s “debatable” whether one person can run all of them successfully, noted Info-Tech’s Bickley. “Distributing leadership among multiple experienced leaders should help Microsoft move faster to execute and keep focus on those primary platforms,” he said.

And for enterprise IT buyers, the change will probably be seen more as a change in internal operational leadership rather than an “overall change in Microsoft’s product strategy,” Bickley noted.

The retirement of old server equipment from data center facilities could become an opportunity for enterprises to generate revenue, instead of being an often costly recycling expense.

Last year Western Digital announced it was experimenting with new ways to extract valuable rare earth elements and metals from obsolete servers from Microsoft’s US data centers, as part of a collaboration with Critical Materials Recycling and PedalPoint Recycling.

And on Thursday, Reuters reported that Korea Zinc, which it described as one of the world’s largest smelters, is in “talks with major US technology firms to recycle data center waste and extract rare earth.”

The move comes almost one year to the day after China announced immediate export controls on seven more rare earth elements critical to enterprise IT hardware manufacturing. The new controls issued by China’s State Council required export licenses for samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium, and yttrium, along with their alloys, oxides, and compounds. All those materials are deemed essential components in data center storage systems, networking equipment and semiconductors.

According to Reuters, the Korea Zinc initiative will give the US another rare earth source beyond its main supplier, China, which produces about 90% of the world’s rare earths, and the single US-based mine run by MP Materials,

Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst at Greyhound Research, said that the Korea Zinc initiative reflects a structural shift that is beginning to take shape inside the global technology infrastructure economy.

For decades, he said, “the retirement of data center equipment was treated almost entirely as a compliance and disposal issue. Enterprises focused on secure decommissioning, certified recycling, and documented destruction of sensitive hardware. Once equipment left production environments, its economic life was assumed to be largely finished.”

That assumption, he pointed out, “is beginning to change, because the hardware inside modern data centres contains a wide range of strategically important materials. Servers, storage systems, networking equipment, and power components contain copper, aluminum, silver, gold, and increasingly small but significant quantities of rare earth elements and other critical minerals.”

These materials play a vital role in the manufacturing of semiconductors, energy systems, defense electronics, and advanced computing infrastructure, he explained, noting, “as global demand for digital infrastructure continues to expand, the volume of retired hardware entering disposal channels is rising quickly.”

Electronic waste has already become one of the fastest growing waste streams in the world. “Global volumes now exceed 60 million tonnes annually and are projected to move toward eighty million tonnes by the end of the decade if current trends continue,” he said. “Data center infrastructure represents only a portion of that total, but it is a particularly important portion because it is concentrated, professionally managed, and replaced in structured cycles.”

For a metals producer, he said, data center infrastructure represents a highly attractive feedstock, because unlike consumer electronics, enterprise hardware is replaced in large batches and flows through professional asset management channels.

That predictability, said Gogia, “allows recyclers to design specialized processes that target specific components and materials. Over time, this creates the foundation for an industrial scale circular supply chain in which retired electronics feed back into the production of new materials.”

For enterprises themselves, he added, “the implications are primarily economic and operational rather than geopolitical. The ability to capture value from retired hardware depends heavily on how organizations manage the end of life phase of their infrastructure lifecycle. Many companies still treat hardware retirement as a simple disposal exercise. Mixed equipment is often shipped to recyclers with little separation between different component types. In those scenarios most of the recoverable value disappears.”

Organizations that approach decommissioning more strategically can improve outcomes significantly, said Gogia, pointing out that separating storage devices, circuit boards, and power components allows recyclers to process materials more efficiently, and maintaining detailed chain of custody records ensures that the hardware is tracked securely, which is often a compliance requirement, while still enabling recovery of valuable materials.

Data centers have traditionally been viewed as energy intensive facilities that consume enormous resources, but, he said, “what is becoming visible now is that they also generate a growing stream of recoverable materials when equipment reaches the end of its operational life. As computing infrastructure continues to expand globally, those retirement streams will begin to resemble industrial resource flows rather than simple waste.”

This article originally appeared on NetworkWorld.

The team at Readiness each month analyzes the latest Patch Tuesday updates from Microsoft and provides detailed, actionable testing guidance. The March release addresses 83 vulnerabilities across Windows, Office, SQL Server, Azure, and .NET — a moderate volume with two publicly disclosed zero-days affecting SQL Server and .NET (though neither is being actively exploited in the wild.)

Six additional vulnerabilities spanning the Windows Kernel, Graphics Component, SMB Server, Accessibility Infrastructure, and Winlogon are flagged as “Exploitation More Likely.”

The most significant change this month is the introduction of Common Log File System (CLFS) hardening with signature verification, which will affect how Windows handles log files across the operating system. 

To help navigate these changes, the Readiness team has created a useful infographic detailing the risks of deploying the updates. (More information about recent Patch Tuesday releases is available here.)

Known issues

March is another clean month for known issues. All three desktop KB articles — KB5079473 (Windows 11 25H2/24H2), KB5078883 (Windows 11 23H2), and KB5078885 (Windows 10 22H2) — explicitly say Microsoft is not currently aware of any issues. 

• CVE-2025-59287 — Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) — Synchronization error reporting remains intentionally disabled since October 2025 to mitigate this critical CVSS 9.8 unauthenticated RCE. Error details continue to be suppressed in the WSUS console with no timeline for restoration. Server 2016 through Server 2025 are affected. Action: There’s no workaround available; monitor Windows Server release health for updates.
• Windows Update Standalone Installer (WUSA) — Continues to fail with ERROR_BAD_PATHNAME when installing .msu packages from network shares containing multiple .msu files. Originated May 2025, it affects Windows 11 24H2/25H2 and Server 2025. Action: This can be mitigated via Known Issue Rollback; copy .msu files to a local directory before installation.

Separately, Microsoft issued an out-of-band update on March 2 (KB5082314) for Windows Server 2022, addressing an issue with Windows Hello for Business certificate renewal in ADFS-based deployments. 

Issues resolved

The March release resolves a small number of issues from previous updates, including:

• A known issue where Secure Launch-capable PCs with Virtual Secure Mode (VSM) enabled were unable to shut down or enter hibernation — instead the device restarted. It has been fixed in KB5078885 for Windows 10 22H2. This had been affecting devices since the January 2026 security update.
• A Windows Defender Application Control (WDAC) issue where COM objects were incorrectly blocked despite being covered by allowlisting policies has been resolved in KB5079473 for Windows 11 24H2/25H2. COM objects are now allowed as expected when matching policy rules are configured.

Major revisions and mitigations

March is a quiet month for inter-cycle revisions. No previously published CVEs received severity upgrades, expanded affected-product lists, or new action requirements. The most notable inter-patch-cycle action was the KB5082314 out-of-band update.

Windows lifecycle and enforcement updates

Two enforcement deadlines covered in our January and February posts are now less than a month away:

• Kerberos RC4 deprecation — Next month, the default encryption for service account ticket issuance changes from RC4 to AES-SHA1 for accounts without an explicit msds-SupportedEncryptionTypes attribute. The July 2026 enforcement phase removes the RC4DefaultDisablementPhase registry override entirely.
• Windows Deployment Services (WDS) hardening — Also in April, hands-free deployment will be disabled by default with a secure-by-default posture.

CLFS hardening

The headline change with this release is the new hardening feature for the CLFS, delivered in KB5079473 for Windows 11 24H2. CLFS is a general-purpose logging subsystem used by transactional NTFS, failover clustering, Windows Update, and many line-of-business applications. The update introduces signature verification for CLFS log files and operates in two modes. Learning Mode (the initial phase) automatically signs existing unsigned log files when they are first opened and audits events without blocking access. Enforcement Mode actively blocks log files that are unsigned or have mismatched signatures. This is a phased rollout — machines begin in Learning Mode, and administrators must manually switch to Enforcement Mode via registry configuration when satisfied that all log files have been properly signed.

• In Learning Mode, run a Windows Update check and install any available updates to verify update flows complete without errors.
• Test backup and restore scenarios, as these rely heavily on CLFS-based transaction logging.
• If your environment uses failover clustering or shared storage, validate that shared log files accessed from multiple machines are correctly signed and accessible.
• Verify that line-of-business applications that use transactional logging start and operate normally in Learning Mode.
• Switch to Enforcement Mode, restart, and repeat the above tests; confirm that any unsigned log files created before the update are now blocked and that the system logs appropriate events.
• Monitor Event Viewer for CLFS-related audit entries and errors throughout testing, particularly during Windows upgrade flows and application startup.

File Systems

Four file system drivers got updates: exFAT (CVE-2026-25174, 7.8), NTFS (CVE-2026-25175, 7.8), ReFS (CVE-2026-23673, 7.8), and UDF (CVE-2026-23672, 7.8). All four are elevation-of-privilege vulnerabilities. This month’s Windows file system test guidance calls for validation of end-of-file handling, file allocation, and offset operations across all four file systems.

• Test file operations on exFAT-formatted USB drives and SD cards: create, copy, move, and delete files of varying sizes, including files that fill the volume near capacity.
• Validate NTFS operations including large file copies, sparse files, and files with extended attributes.
• On servers using ReFS, verify volume integrity, file copy operations, and Storage Spaces Direct workloads.
• Mount UDF-formatted optical media or ISO images and verify files can be read and browsed without errors.

Networking and bluetooth

The Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock (afd.sys) received four patches (CVE-2026-24293, CVE-2026-25176, CVE-2026-25178, CVE-2026-25179), making it the most heavily patched component. The Device Association Service (das.dll) and Bluetooth RFCOMM driver (CVE-2026-23671, 7.0) were also updated, along with core network components including NDIS and MUP (Multiple UNC Provider).

• Test messaging applications such as Microsoft Teams and web browsing to exercise WinSock connectivity paths.
• Pair and use Bluetooth devices including audio headsets, keyboards, and file transfer via RFCOMM.
• Verify SMB, WebDAV, DFS, and NFS access through the Multiple UNC Provider — open files on remote shares using UNC paths and confirm reads and writes succeed.

Graphics, GDI and accessibility

The Graphics Component received a vulnerability flagged as Exploitation More Likely (CVE-2026-23668, 7.0), alongside updates to GDI (CVE-2026-25190, 7.8) and GDI+ (CVE-2026-25181, 7.5). The Accessibility Infrastructure (ATBroker.exe) also has an Exploitation More Likely vulnerability (CVE-2026-24291, 7.8) and an information disclosure issue (CVE-2026-25186, 5.5). The Windows Shell link processing component (CVE-2026-25185) and the DWM Core Library (CVE-2026-25189, 7.8) were also patched.

• Open and render EMF and WMF metafiles in applications that rely on GDI/GDI+ — verify images display correctly without crashes or rendering artifacts.
• Test applications that use the GDI+ library for image processing, including printing workflows.
• Verify that On-Screen Keyboard, Magnifier, and Narrator launch and function correctly after applying the update.
• Test creation and use of shortcut (.lnk) files — create shortcuts to applications, documents, and network locations, then verify they resolve and open correctly.

SMB and file sharing

The Windows SMB Server has an Exploitation More Likely vulnerability (CVE-2026-24294, 7.8) alongside a second SMB issue (CVE-2026-26128, 7.8). The Windows File Server component also received a high-scoring patch (CVE-2026-24283, 8.8). Updates to srv.sys, srv2.sys, and srvnet.sys affect all editions from Windows 10 1607 through Windows Server 2025.

• Access files on SMB remote shares with SMB signing enabled — perform read, write, copy, and delete operations.
• Repeat the above tests with SMB signing disabled to validate both paths.
• Perform sustained file I/O to network shares under load, verifying that connections remain stable and data integrity is maintained.
• Test access to SMB shares from different client OS versions to validate cross-version compatibility.

Kernel and Winlogon

The Windows Kernel received two Exploitation More Likely vulnerabilities (CVE-2026-24289 and CVE-2026-26132, both 7.8), plus a third kernel issue (CVE-2026-24287, 7.8). Winlogon also has an Exploitation More Likely vulnerability (CVE-2026-25187, 7.8). Testing should include:

• Test Winlogon scenarios: interactive logon, logoff, workstation lock and unlock, fast user switching, and Ctrl+Alt+Delete secure attention sequence.
• If using Windows Projected File System (e.g. Scalar for large Git repos), verify that projected files materialize correctly on access.

Routing, VPN and remote access

The Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) received three patches this month: CVE-2026-25172 (8.8), CVE-2026-25173 (8.0), and CVE-2026-26111 (8.8). These affect the RRAS management snap-in, packet filtering, and SSTP VPN connectivity. Organizations running Windows Server with the RRAS role should prioritize testing.

• Open the RRAS management snap-in and verify that routing tables and interface configurations display correctly.
• Test packet filter rules — create, modify, and delete filters, then verify traffic is correctly permitted or blocked.
• Establish and disconnect SSTP VPN connections, verifying that data flows correctly and the tunnel remains stable under sustained use.
• Verify static routes and ensure that RIP routing configuration persists across service restarts.

SQL Server

SQL Server had three vulnerabilities, all scored at 8.8, one of which — CVE-2026-21262, an elevation-of-privilege issue — is a publicly disclosed zero-day. The other two (CVE-2026-26115 and CVE-2026-26116) are also elevation-of-privilege vulnerabilities. GDR patches span SQL Server 2016 SP3 through SQL Server 2025, with 10 separate KB articles covering both RTM and cumulative update baselines across all supported versions. Given the public disclosure, SQL Server patching should be prioritized.

• Install the appropriate GDR patch on top of the correct baseline (RTM or latest CU) for your SQL Server version.
• Verify that the SQL Server service starts, accepts connections, and executes queries normally after patching.
• Test database backup and restore operations to ensure transactional integrity.

Office & SharePoint

Microsoft Excel had five vulnerabilities (CVE-2026-26107, CVE-2026-26108, CVE-2026-26109, CVE-2026-26112, CVE-2026-26144), with CVE-2026-26109 scoring 8.4. SharePoint Server had three vulnerabilities, including CVE-2026-26106 (8.8) and CVE-2026-26114 (8.8) as did the Microsoft Office platform; the latter included two scored at 8.4 (CVE-2026-26110, CVE-2026-26113).

• Open and edit complex Excel workbooks with formulas, macros, and external data connections.
• Validate SharePoint document library operations, co-authoring, and workflow execution.
• Test Office add-ins and verify that line-of-business applications integrating with Office operate correctly.
• Open documents containing embedded objects and verify they render and activate without errors.

.NET & ASP.NET Core

The March patches for .NET and ASP.NET Core include a publicly disclosed zero-day: CVE-2026-26127, a denial-of-service vulnerability scored at 7.5 that affects the .NET runtime. A second .NET vulnerability (CVE-2026-26131, EoP, 7.8) and an ASP.NET Core denial-of-service issue (CVE-2026-26130, 7.5) round out the .NET updates. These affect runtime and SDK packages. No application rebuilds or configuration changes are expected, but the public disclosure warrants prompt patching.

• Test runtime functionality including file I/O, networking, cryptography, and threading.
• Validate ASP.NET Core workloads, particularly those exposed to untrusted input that could trigger the denial-of-service conditions patched this month.

The six “Exploitation More Likely” rated vulnerabilities — spanning the Windows Kernel, Winlogon, SMB Server, Graphics Component, and Accessibility Infrastructure — affect core operating system stability and need immediate attention. Organizations using RRAS for VPN or routing should give priority to the three high-scoring flaws. 

Each month, we break down the update cycle into product families (as defined by Microsoft) with the following basic groupings: 

• Browsers (Microsoft IE and Edge) 
• Microsoft Windows (both desktop and server) 
• Microsoft Office
• Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server 
• Microsoft Developer Tools (Visual Studio and .NET)
• Adobe (if you get this far) 

Microsoft Edge (and Chromium)

Microsoft republished 10 Chromium security fixes for Microsoft Edge this cycle, alongside one Edge-specific vulnerability. None are actively exploited or publicly disclosed.

• CVE-2026-26133 — M365 Copilot — Information disclosure (CVSS 7.1, Important); surfaces through Edge for Android and iOS. Customer action required.

The Chromium update addresses issues across several components covering CVE-2026-3536 (integer overflow in ANGLE), CVE-2026-3538 (integer overflow in Skia), and CVE-2026-3544 (heap buffer overflow in WebCodecs). Organizations should refer to the Chrome Releases blog for Google’s severity assessments. Add these low-impact browser updates to your standard release schedule.

Microsoft Windows

Windows accounts for 48 of this month’s CVEs, all rated Important. There are no actively exploited or publicly disclosed vulnerabilities in the Windows category. Microsoft flagged six CVEs as “Exploitation More Likely,” all elevation-of-privilege vulnerabilities that include:

• CVE-2026-24289, CVE-2026-26132 — Windows Kernel — Elevation of privilege (CVSS 7.8); memory corruption and use-after-free conditions enabling SYSTEM escalation from a local authenticated session.
• CVE-2026-25187 — Winlogon — Elevation of privilege (CVSS 7.8); discovered by Google Project Zero. Given Winlogon’s position in the authentication path, this is a high-value target for post-exploitation.
• CVE-2026-24294 — Windows SMB Server — Elevation of privilege (CVSS 7.8); authentication flaw allowing privilege escalation on systems with SMB enabled.
• CVE-2026-24291 — Windows Accessibility Infrastructure (ATBroker.exe) — Elevation of privilege (CVSS 7.8).
• CVE-2026-23668 — Windows Graphics Component — Elevation of privilege (CVSS 7.0); race condition.

With no actively exploited vulnerabilities, no critical ratings, and no publicly disclosed issues, this is the quietest Windows month of the year so far. Add these updates to your standard deployment schedule. (Kind of amazing, eh?)

Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office got 12 security fixes, including three of them critical. None are actively exploited or publicly disclosed, and none are flagged as “Exploitation More Likely” — but the attack surface warrants attention.

• CVE-2026-26113, CVE-2026-26110 — Microsoft Office — Remote code execution (CVSS 8.4, critical). Both confirm the Preview Pane as an attack vector — simply previewing a malicious file in Outlook or File Explorer is sufficient to trigger execution without further user interaction. 
• CVE-2026-26144 — Microsoft Excel — Information disclosure (CVSS 7.5, critical). This is a novel vulnerability: a network-accessible, zero-click data exfiltration path through Copilot Agent mode. No user interaction is required. It is unusual to see an information disclosure rated critical, reflecting the sensitivity of the data exposed. 

The two Preview Pane RCEs (CVE-2026-26113, CVE-2026-26110) make this a “Patch Now” release for Office. Organizations that cannot deploy immediately should consider temporarily disabling the Preview Pane in Outlook and File Explorer.

Microsoft SQL Server and Exchange

SQL Server has three elevation-of-privilege vulnerabilities, all CVSS 8.8, all enabling authenticated users to escalate to sysadmin over the network:

• CVE-2026-21262 — Improper access control. Publicly disclosed (zero-day). Affects SQL Server 2016 SP3 through 2025.
• CVE-2026-26115 — Improper input validation. Affects SQL Server 2016 SP3 through 2025.
• CVE-2026-26116 — SQL injection. Affects SQL Server 2025 only.

CVE-2026-21262 is one of this month’s two zero-days. While rated “Exploitation Less Likely,” the public disclosure and broad version coverage (every supported edition) warrant priority patching for SQL Server environments. Exchange Server has not received any security updates this month. Add these SQL Server updates to your Patch Now schedule.

Developer tools

For March, Microsoft addresses four vulnerabilities across .NET, ASP.NET Core, and Microsoft Semantic Kernel, all rated Important, covering the following:

• CVE-2026-26127 — .NET — Denial of service (CVSS 7.5). Publicly disclosed (zero-day). An unauthenticated out-of-bounds read affecting .NET 9.0 and 10.0 across Windows, macOS, and Linux.
• CVE-2026-26130 — ASP.NET Core — Denial of service (CVSS 7.5). Unauthenticated resource exhaustion across ASP.NET Core 8.0, 9.0, and 10.0.
• CVE-2026-26030 — Semantic Kernel Python SDK — Remote code execution (CVSS 9.9). Filter bypass in InMemoryVectorStore; exploitation requires untrusted input to the filter path. Rated “Exploitation Unlikely.”
• CVE-2026-26131 — .NET 10.0 — Elevation of privilege (CVSS 7.8). Incorrect default permissions on Windows.

The two unauthenticated DoS vulnerabilities are the priority for internet-facing .NET and ASP.NET Core services. CVE-2026-26127 is the second of this month’s two zero-days. Add these updates to your “Patch Now” deployment schedule.

Adobe (and third-party updates)

Adobe (but not Microsoft) has released a single update (APSB26-26) that affects Adobe Reader and Acrobat. Since you made it this far, one item worth flagging for its novelty: CVE-2026-21536 (CVSS 9.8), a critical unauthenticated remote code execution vulnerability in the Microsoft Devices Pricing Program, was discovered by XBOW, an autonomous AI-powered penetration testing agent. This marks one of the first critical-severity CVEs in a Microsoft product publicly attributed to an AI security researcher. 

Threat actors are exploiting two high severity zero day vulnerabilities in the Chrome browser that experts say IT teams must patch immediately.

Google has issued emergency patches for the two holes, CVE-2026-3909 and CVE-2026-3910. This comes just days after the release of 29 fixes for holes as part of March Patch Tuesday, and a zero day patch released in February. Affected are browsers before version 146.0.7680.75.

These exploits provide yet another reason why infosec leaders need to ensure there’s a corporate patching strategy in place for all authorized browsers and plugins.

“If you’re not managing browser patches, your odds of getting pwned are increasing daily,” said David Shipley of Canadian-based security awareness training provider Beauceron Security. 

CVE-2026-3910 allows a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code inside a sandbox via a crafted HTML page, because of an inappropriate implementation within Chrome’s V8 JavaScript and WebAssembly engine. CVE-2026-3909 allows a remote attacker to perform out of bounds memory access via a crafted HTML page; the cause is an out of bounds write in Chrome’s Skia graphics library. Accessing browser memory could result in the loss of sensitive corporate information, noted Shipley.

Following company policy, Google isn’t releasing details about the bugs until a majority of users are updated with a fix.

Browsers a prime target

Browsers are a prime target for threat actors because they are a tool everyone online uses. A 2025 report by Omdia for Palo Alto Networks estimated that, in a 12 month period, 95% of organizations suffered a security incident originating from an employee’s browser.

Because of this, one expert has noted that adversaries now target the browser directly, with attacks like cross-site scripting (XSS), session hijacking via stolen tokens, and advanced phishing that bypasses traditional MFA. A browser-centric zero trust framework is the necessary response, he argued.

[Related content: Picking a secure enterprise browser]

These new flaws underscore the reason why browser engines remain among the most attractive targets for attackers, noted Jack Bicer, director of vulnerability research at Action1. “With active exploitation already confirmed, organizations that delay updates risk exposing users to drive-by attacks delivered through compromised or malicious websites.”

Chromium and all Chromium-based browsers, including Chrome, Edge, and others, must be updated to the latest security versions as soon as possible, he said. Admins should also ensure that automatic updates are enabled across enterprise endpoints, monitor for outdated browser versions, and consider browser isolation technologies to reduce exposure to web-based attacks.

Scott Caveza, senior staff research engineer at Tenable, agreed that the latest two zero days should be on the radar of any organization where Chrome is actively installed. While Google hasn’t provided details on the abuse of these flaws, he noted that most browser-related exploits do require a victim to visit a crafted website, making attacks more likely to be targeted. 

Fortunately, he added, updating Chrome is fast and easy, and many installations leave automatic updates enabled.

“We know attackers are opportunistic, and when they set their sights on one of the most widely installed browsers in the market, it’s imperative that teams are taking action now to ensure updates are applied as soon as possible,” he said.

This article originally appeared on CSOonline.

Several European companies are warning that the EU’s increased focus on technological sovereignty could hurt both profitability and competitiveness and argue it will be difficult to quickly reduce dependence on US tech firms, the Financial Times reports.

The European Commission is currently working on a new package for technological sovereignty aimed at reducing Europe’s dependence on US players in areas such as cloud services, software, and AI. The initiative has gained increased political momentum following concerns that geopolitical conflicts or sudden shifts in US policy could affect European companies’ access to critical technology.

However, companies across sectors ranging from banking to manufacturing warned that a rapid technological shift risks being both costly and complicated. For decades, many organizations have built their systems around platforms from companies like Microsoft and Google and many believe US providers still lead European alternatives in several areas.

Business concerns about digital sovereignty efforts also came up at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January.

Windows 11 25H2 has been released, but behind the scenes, Microsoft is constantly working to improve the newest version of Windows. The company frequently rolls out public preview builds to members of its Windows Insider Program, allowing them to test out — and help shape — upcoming features.

Skip to the latest builds

The Windows Insider program is divided into four channels:

• The Canary Channel is where platform changes (such as major updates to the Windows kernel and new APIs) are previewed. These changes are not tied to a particular Windows release and may never ship at all. Little documentation is provided, and builds are likely to be very unstable. This channel is best for highly technical users.
• The Dev Channel is where new features are introduced for initial testing, regardless of which Windows release they’ll eventually end up in. This channel is best for technical users and developers and builds in it may be unstable and buggy.
• In the Beta Channel, you’ll get more polished features that will be deployed in the next major Windows release. This channel is best for early adopters, and Microsoft says your feedback in this channel will have the most impact.
• The Release Preview Channel typically doesn’t see action until shortly before a new feature update is rolled out. It’s meant for final testing of an upcoming release and is best for those who want the most stable builds.

The Beta and Release Preview Channels also receive bug-fix builds for the currently shipping version of Windows 11. See “How to preview and deploy Windows 10 and 11 updates” for more details about the four channels and how to switch to a different channel.

Not everyone can participate in the Windows 11 Insider program, because the new operating system has more stringent system requirements than Windows 10. If your PC fails to meet the minimum hardware requirements for Windows 11, you cannot join the Windows 11 Insider Program. (See “How to check if your PC can run Windows 11.”)

Below you’ll find information about the Windows 11 preview builds that have been announced by Microsoft in the past six months. (For the Release Preview Channel, we cover builds released for the current version of Windows 11, not for earlier versions.) For each build, we’ve included the date of its release, which Insider channel it was released to, a summary of what’s in the build, and a link to Microsoft’s announcement about it.

Note: If you’re looking for information about updates being rolled out to all Windows 11 users, not previews for Windows Insiders, see “Windows 11: A guide to the updates.”

The latest Windows 11 Insider preview builds

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8062

Release date: March 13, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build includes numerous changes and refinements, including an update to the “Remove Default Microsoft Store packages” policy for Windows Enterprise and Education SKUs that allows IT administrators to remove MSIX/APPX apps by adding their app package family name (PFNs) to a dynamic list.

Starting with this update, the Windows kernel will enforce a new policy removing default trust for cross-signed drivers. The policy allows third-party drivers from the WHCP program by default, with an allow list of trustworthy publishers and drivers from the cross-signing program.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8062.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8068

Release date: March 13, 2026

Released to: Dev Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build includes numerous changes and refinements, including an update to the “Remove Default Microsoft Store packages” policy for Windows Enterprise and Education SKUs that allows IT administrators to remove MSIX/APPX apps by adding their app package family name (PFNs) to a dynamic list.

Starting with this update, the Windows kernel will enforce a new policy removing default trust for cross-signed drivers. The policy allows third-party drivers from the WHCP program by default, with an allow list of trustworthy publishers and drivers from the cross-signing program.

(Get more info about  Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8068.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1737

Release date: March 13, 2026

Released to: Canary Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build makes refinements to the Pen settings page, including small changes to the options for the pen tail button. A new option, “Same as Copilot key,” enables the pen tail button to launch the same app as the Copilot key.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1737.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29550.1000

Release date: March 13, 2026

Released to: Canary Channel (29500 build series)

For those  who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates in the Canary Channel’s optional 29500 build series, this build has a variety of minor changes, including one in which changes to global power settings (for example, Display, Sleep, Hibernate timeouts, Power/Sleep button, and lid close actions) from Settings are now applied to all power plans. This should help improve persistence of chosen settings.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29550.1000.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Builds 26100.8106 and 26200.8106

Release date: March 12, 2026

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build introduces a wide range of minor features being rolled out gradually, including the ability to turn Smart App Control (SAC) on or off without needing a clean install. To make changes, go to Settings > Windows Security > App & Browser Control > Smart App Control settings. When turned on, SAC helps block untrusted or potentially harmful apps.

The update also improves stability in Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) when you run x64 apps on ARM64 devices. These apps run more smoothly and respond as expected.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Builds 26100.8106 and 26200.8106.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7961

Release date: March 6, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build re-enables Administrator protection, which aims to protect free-floating admin rights for administrator users, allowing them to still perform all admin functions with just-in-time admin privileges. This feature is off by default and can be enabled via OMA-URI in Intune or via group policy.

Other changes and improvements being gradually rolled out to the same group include the ability to use voice typing (Windows key + H) when renaming files in File Explorer, as well as a smaller peek view in the drag tray.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Build 26220.7961.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.7965

Release date: March 6, 2026

Released to: Dev Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build re-enables Administrator protection, which aims to protect free-floating admin rights for administrator users, allowing them to still perform all admin functions with just-in-time admin privileges. This feature is off by default and can be enabled via OMA-URI in Intune or via group policy.

Other changes and improvements being gradually rolled out to the same group include the ability to use voice typing when renaming files in File Explorer, as well as a smaller peek view in the drag tray.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.7965.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1685

Release date: March 6, 2026

Released to: Canary Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build lets you use voice typing (Windows key + H) when renaming files in File Explorer. The build also improves the reliability of removing Windows Update files and windows.old files via Settings > System > Storage.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1685.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7934

Release date: Feb. 27, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build gives administrators and Application Control for Business policy authors additional controls over the processing of batch files and CMD scripts. Starting with this release, admins can enable a more secure mode for processing batch files that ensures they do not change during execution by adding a value to the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor named LockBatchFilesWhenInUse (DWORD, value 0 or 1). Policy authors can also use the LockBatchFilesWhenInUse application manifest control documented here to enable this mode.

There are a variety of other improvements being rolled out gradually, including one in which a new taskbar indicator displays while you’re sharing, giving a quick reminder that audio is still being shared. Clicking the indicator is a fast path to open sharing settings to change volume or stop sharing.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7934.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.7939

Release date: Feb. 27, 2026

Released to: Dev Channel

For those who opted to receive the latest updates, this build gives administrators and Application Control for Business policy authors additional controls over the processing of batch files and CMD scripts. Starting with this release, admins can enable a more secure mode for processing batch files that ensures they do not change during execution by adding a value to the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor named LockBatchFilesWhenInUse (DWORD, value 0 or 1). Policy authors can also use the LockBatchFilesWhenInUse application manifest control documented here to enable this mode.

There are a variety of other improvements being rolled out gradually, including one in which a new taskbar indicator displays while you’re sharing, offering a quick reminder that audio is still being shared. Clicking the indicator is a fast path to open sharing settings to change volume or stop sharing.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.7939.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1673

Release date: Feb. 27, 2026

Released to: Canary Channel

For those who have opted to receive the latest updates, this build gets a variety of new features being rolled out gradually, including one in which Quick Machine Recovery (QMR) now turns on automatically for enterprise managed Windows Professional devices, as well as Windows Professional devices that are not domain-joined. These devices receive the same recovery features available to Windows Home users. For domain-joined devices, QMR stays off unless it is enabled by the organization.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1673.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7872

Release date: February 20, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build offers a variety of new features, including simplified specifications on the ‘Device info’ Card on the Settings Home page and improved mouseover animations for app groups on the taskbar.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7872.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.7877

Release date: February 20, 2026

Released to: Dev Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build offers a variety of new features, including simplified specifications on the ‘Device info’ Card on the Settings Home page and improved mouseover animations for app groups on the taskbar.

Several bugs have also been fixed, including one in which all File Explorer open windows and tabs unexpectedly jumped to Desktop or Home.

Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.7877.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1619

Release date: February 20, 2026

Released to: Canary Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build offers a variety of new features, including one in which Windows Hello Enhanced Sign-in Security (ESS) supports peripheral fingerprint sensors. Previously, ESS was only available on PCs with built-in biometric sensors, but now it can be used when you plug in a supported ESS fingerprint reader.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1619.)

Optional Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29531.1000

Release date: February 18, 2026

Released to: Canary Channel

This build is the first in a new Canary Channel optional path with a focus on platform development, which will introduce new features before the existing 28000 Canary Channel series. Microsoft recommends that most people remain on the 28000 build path, but adds that those who want to get the newest platform changes as early as possible may want to switch to this new 29500 path. Note, though, that if you switch to the 29500 path by installing this build, you won’t be able to go back to the 28000 Canary Channel series.

The build itself, in Microsoft’s words, “includes platform changes in moving to a new active development build.”

Microsoft warns, “because of the focus on platform development for this path, you may notice a temporary loss in some features that you have today. These features will return to this new active development build.”

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29531.1000.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7859

Release date: February 17, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build displays an option to upgrade to a different Microsoft 365 plan on the Accounts page within the Settings app. It also rolls out fixes for several bugs, including one in which all File Explorer open windows and tabs unexpectedly jumped to Desktop or Home.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Preview Build 26220.7859.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Builds 26100.7918 and 26200.7918

Release date: February 17, 2026

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build gradually rolls out a variety of new features, including one in which Quick Machine Recovery (QMR) now turns on automatically for Windows Professional devices that are not domain‑joined and not enrolled in enterprise endpoint management. These devices receive the same recovery features available to Windows Home users. For domain‑joined or enterprise managed devices, QMR stays off unless it is enabled by the organization. The build also improves login screen reliability.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Builds 26100.7918 and 26200.7918.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1611

Release date: February 12, 2026

Released to: Canary Channel

This build brings Sysmon functionality natively to Windows. Sysmon functionality allows you to capture system events that can help with threat detection, and you can use custom configuration files to filter the events you want to monitor. The captured events are written on the Windows event log, enabling them to be used with security applications and in a wide range of use cases.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1611.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7755

Release date: February 9, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build gradually rolls out several new features, including Emoji 16.0, which contains a new set of emojis, and the ability to directly control pan and tilt for supported cameras in the Settings app.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 226220.7755.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.7760

Release date: February 9, 2026

Released to: Dev Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build gradually rolls out several new features, including Emoji 16.0, which contains a new set of emojis, and the ability to directly control pan and tilt for supported cameras in the Settings app.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.7760.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1546

Release date: February 4, 2026

Released to: Canary Channel

This update, in the words of Microsoft, “includes a small set of general improvements and fixes that improve the overall experience for Insiders” running Windows.

It also fixes one bug that affected apps working with files stored on OneDrive or Dropbox.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1546.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7752

Release date: February 3, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

Those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get Sysmon functionality natively in Windows. Sysmon functionality allows you to capture system events that can help with threat detection, and you can use custom configuration files to filter the events you want to monitor. The captured events are written on the Windows event log, enabling them to be used with security applications and a wide range of use cases. (This feature is being gradually rolled out.)

The same group also gets a number of bug fixes being gradually rolled out, including for a File Explorer bug in which icons/tooltips for “Add to favorites” were missing.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 26220.7752.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.7733

Release date: February 3, 2026

Released to: Dev Channel

Those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get Sysmon functionality natively in Windows. Sysmon functionality allows you to capture system events that can help with threat detection, and you can use custom configuration files to filter the events you want to monitor. The captured events are written on the Windows event log, enabling them to be used with security applications and a wide range of use cases. (This feature is being gradually rolled out.)

The same group also gets a number of bug fixes being gradually rolled out, including for a File Explorer bug in which icons/tooltips for “Add to favorites” were missing.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 26300.7733.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1495

Release date: January 28, 2025

Released to: Canary Channel

This build, in Microsoft’s words, “includes a small set of general improvements and fixes that improve the overall experience [of Windows 11].” It also fixes a variety of bugs, including one that led to the Windows Update settings page hanging when loading.

The build has two known issues, one that sometimes causes all open File Explorer windows and tabs to unexpectedly jump to Desktop or Home in File Explorer, and another in which the desktop watermark is showing the wrong build number.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 28020.1495.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Builds 26100.7701 and 26200.7701

Release date: January 27, 2026

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build gradually rolls out a variety of new features for Copilot+ PCs, including one in which Narrator gives you more control over how it announces on‑screen controls. You can choose which details are spoken and adjust their order to match how you navigate apps. These settings apply throughout the app to help reduce extra speech and make Narrator easier to follow.

The build also immediately rolls out a variety of new features for all PCs, including one in Data Protection Application Programming Interface (DPAPI) domain backup key management. Administrators can now set how often keys rotate automatically. This strengthens cryptographic security and reduces reliance on older encryption algorithms.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Builds 26100.7701 and 26200.7701.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7670

Release date: January 27, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build gradually rolls out several bug fixes, including for an issue in which the Search process was showing an icon with an X instead of a magnifying glass.

The build has five known issues, including one in which some Insiders’ apps aren’t showing in the system tray when they should be.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 26220.7670.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.7674

Release date: January 27, 2026

Released to: Dev Channel

In this build, the Dev Channel jumps ahead to receive 26300 series builds. This means that the window to switch from the Dev Channel to the Beta Channel is closed once Build 26300.7674is installed on your PC. This build for the Dev Channel is identical to the Windows 11 Build 26220.7653 release (see below).

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 26300.7674.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7653

Release date: January 21, 2026

Released to: Dev Channel

This build for the Dev Channel is identical to the January 16th Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7653 released to the Beta Channel. See the writeup below for details.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7653.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7653

Release date: January 16, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build gradually rolls out several changes, including one in which you can now set .webp images for your desktop background in Settings > Personalization > Desktop Background.

The same group also gets a number of bug fixes being gradually rolled out, including for a bug in which Settings crashed when interacting with audio devices.

The build has four known issues, including one in which some Insiders’ apps aren’t showing in the system tray when they should be.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7653.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1371 

Release date: January 14, 2026

Released to: Canary Channel

This build gradually rolls out a variety of bug fixes for those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, including a bug in which File Explorer showed a white flash when navigating between pages.

There is one known issue in this build: The desktop watermark shows the wrong build number.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1371.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7535

Release date: January 9, 2026

Released to: Dev & Beta Channels

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build gradually rolls out Copilot-powered image descriptions to Narrator on Copilot+ PCs, making it possible for blind and low-vision users to hear detailed, AI-generated descriptions of images, charts, and graphs.

The same group also gets a number of bug fixes being gradually rolled out, including for an issue in which File Explorer was causing explorer.exe to crash for some Insiders when invoking the context menu on the desktop.

The build has seven known issues, including one in which Settings crashes when interacting with audio devices.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7535.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7523

Release date: December 19, 2025

Released to: Dev & Beta Channels

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build gradually rolls out a version of Copilot on the taskbar tailored for commercial customers. It uses Work IQ as contextual information that they can reference in their Copilot chats and with Microsoft 365 AI agents. In addition, the build introduces Agent Launchers, a new framework that enables Windows apps to register AI agents and make them discoverable across the system.

The same group also gets a number of bug fixes being gradually rolled out, including one that addresses an issue in which File Explorer showed a white flash when navigating between pages.

The build has nine known issues, including one in which opening the context menu is causing explorer.exe to crash for some Insiders.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7523.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1362

Release date: December 15, 2025

Released to: Canary Channel

This build gradually rolls out several new features for Copilot+ PCs, including a streamlined design for the Click to Do context menu that makes frequently used actions like Copy, Save, Share, and Open easier to access. It also rolls out new features for all PCs, including improvements to the dark mode experience in File Explorer.

A variety of bug fixes are being gradually rolled out, including one for an issue in which Settings became unresponsive when attempting to navigate to the Network & Internet section.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1362.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28000.1340 

Release date: December 9, 2025

Released to: Canary Channel

This build has, in Microsoft’s words, a “small set of general improvements and fixes” that improve Windows. It also enables more of the new features and improvements originally released with the October non-security preview update for Windows 11.

In addition, the build fixes a bug that caused some Storage Spaces to become inaccessible or Storage Spaces Direct to fail when creating a storage cluster.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28000.1340.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7344

Release date: December 5, 2025

Released to: Dev & Beta Channels

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build offers native support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open standard that gives AI agents a universal way to connect with apps, tools, and services. Agents can discover and connect to these tools and other agents via a secure, manageable Windows on-device registry (ODR). By default, all agent connectors in the Windows ODR will be contained in a secure environment with their own identity and audit trail.

In addition, Quick machine recovery (QMR) will now be turned on automatically for Windows Professional devices that are not domain joined. These devices will get the same recovery features as Windows Home users. For enterprise computers that are domain joined, nothing changes — QMR will stay off unless your organization turns it on.

Those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates also get a number of bug fixes, including addressing a bug in which the search window to unexpectedly started floating above the taskbar.

The build has seven known issues, including one in which File Explorer shows a white flash when navigating between pages.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7344.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7271

Release date: November 21, 2025

Released to:  Dev & Beta Channels

This build introduces several features being rolled out gradually for those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates. These include point-in-time restore for Windows, which lets you to quickly roll your device back to a previous state to minimize downtime and simplify troubleshooting, and (on NPU devices) fluid dictation in voice typing, which automatically corrects grammar, punctuation, and filler words as you speak.

The build also expands the availability of the Xbox full-screen experience to additional Windows 11 PCs. You can add a controller to your PC for task switching and streamlined gaming on your desktop, laptop, or tablet.

Those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates also get several bug fixes, including one that resolves a hung taskbar after receiving certain notifications.

The build has seven known issues, including one in which File Explorer shows a white flash when navigating between pages.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7271.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28000.1199

Release date: November 18, 2025

Released to: Canary Channel

This build has, in Microsoft’s words, a “small set of general improvements and fixes” that improve Windows.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28000.1199.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Builds 26100.7296 and 26200.7296

Release date: November 17, 2025

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This update introduces a wide range of features being rolled out gradually, including several for Copilot+ PCs, such as Windows Studio Effects, which provide AI-powered camera enhancements on an additional, alternative camera such as a USB webcam or your laptop’s built-in rear camera.

All Windows 11 PCs get a variety of new features being gradually rolled out, including Windows Hello Enhanced Sign-in Security (ESS), now supporting peripheral fingerprint sensors. Also, on PCs with the settings “quick machine recovery” and “automatically check for solutions” both enabled, Quick Machine Recovery now runs a one‑time scan by default instead of repeating scans in a loop. If a fix isn’t available right away, QMR will quickly point you to the most appropriate recovery options to get you back up and running.

A bug fix is being immediately rolled out to all PCs to address an issue that affects Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS), when LSASS could become unstable due to an access violation.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Builds 26100.7296 and 26200.7296.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7262

Release date: November 17, 2025

Released to: Beta and Dev Channels

In this build, those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get a variety of features being gradually rolled out, including using high-definition voices for English (US) in Narrator and Magnifier that use generative AI to adjust tone and pacing for more natural, expressive speech. Also rolling out is a new “Experimental agentic features” toggle in the Settings app that enables the creation of AI agent accounts and an agent workspace, and grants agentic apps access to your Documents, Downloads, Desktop, Music, Pictures, and Videos folders. (Find out more about experimental agentic features.)

The same group also gets a variety of bug fixes rolled out gradually, including for a bug in which the Task Manager process wasn’t stopping correctly after Task Manager was closed. As a result, Task Manager might have been unexpectedly open on boot.

There are four known issues in this build, including one in which the scrollbar and footer are missing in File Explorer and when text is scaled in the dark mode version of the copy dialog.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7262.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7070

Release date: November 7, 2025

Released to: Beta and Dev Channels

In this build, those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get a variety of features being gradually rolled out, including the ability to choose your default dashboard in an updated Widget Board Settings.

Everyone gets an updated Quick Machine Recovery in Windows, which makes it easier and quicker to get back to a working PC. The experience in both Windows Settings and the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) has been streamlined.

A variety of bug fixes are being rolled out gradually to those who have opted to receive the latest updates, including one that fixes a bug in which the “Automatically hide the taskbar” setting unexpectedly turned off after displaying a message saying, “a toolbar is already hidden on this side of your screen.”

There are five known issues in this build, including one in which the scrollbar and footer are missing in File Explorer when text is scaled in the dark mode version of the copy dialog.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7070.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28000

Release date: November 7, 2025

Released to: Canary Channel

This build has, in Microsoft’s words, a “small set of general improvements and fixes.” There are also a variety of bug fixes, including for a bug in which the credentials window was not accessible when trying to log in to Outlook.

There are two known issues in this build, one in which sleep and shutdown aren’t working correctly for some Insiders, and the other in which the new Start menu unexpectedly scrolls to the top.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28000.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27982

Release date: November 4, 2025

Released to: Canary Channel

This build gradually rolls out several new features, including one in which you can add, remove, and rearrange lock screen widgets such as Weather, Watchlist, and Sports on the lock screen. Windows also provides suggested widgets on the lock screen. To customize your lock screen widgets, go to Settings > Personalization > Lock screen.

Also new is a “drag tray” that appears at the top of your screen when you drag a local file from File Explorer or your desktop. You can drop the file into one of the displayed apps or select More to open the Windows share window.

A variety of bugs have been fixed, including one in which if you used your PC for a while without rebooting, explorer.exe might start crashing repeatedly.

There are two known issues in this build, one in which sleep and shutdown aren’t working correctly for some Insiders, and the other in which the new Start menu unexpectedly scrolls to the top.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27982.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7051

Release date: October 31, 2025

Released to: Beta and Dev Channels

In this build, those have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get a variety of features being gradually rolled out, including Ask Copilot in the taskbar, which gives  you one-click access to Copilot Vision and Voice, so you can search via Copilot using text, voice, or guided support with Copilot Vision. As you type, results appear and update instantly. Turn it on by going to Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Ask Copilot.  You can also manage whether the Copilot app launches automatically at sign-in using the “Auto start on log in” toggle in the Copilot app settings.

The same group gets a variety of bug fixes being rolled out gradually, including one to address an issue in which  interacting with a folder or its contents in Start menu could result in the folder becoming invisible.

There are four known issues in this build, including one in which the scrollbar and footer are missing in File Explorer when text is scaled in the dark mode version of the copy dialog.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7051.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.6982

Release date: October 24, 2025

Released to: Dev Channel

In this build, those have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get a variety of changes being gradually rolled out, including Copy & Search, which allows you to search the text in your clipboard with a single click. When you copy text anywhere in Windows, a paste gleam will appear in your search box. Click on this gleam and your copied text will appear in the search field, allowing you to search instantly.

The same group gets a variety of bug fixes, including one for a bug in which the search icon in File Explorer sometimes infinitely looped in an animation.

There are five known issues in this build, including one in which the scrollbar and footer are missing in File Explorer when text is scaled in dark mode version of the copy dialog.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.6982.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27975 

Release date: October 23, 2025

Released to: Canary Channel

This build has, in Microsoft’s words, a “small set of general improvements and fixes” that improve Windows.

A variety of bugs have also been fixed, including one in which Settings crashed when accessing drive information under Settings > System > Storage. This also impacted accessing the drive information from the properties when you right-clicked a drive in File Explorer.

There are two known issues in this build, one in which sleep and shutdown aren’t working correctly for some Insiders, and the other in which the new Start menu unexpectedly scrolled to the top.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27975.)

Windows 11 Builds 26100.7015 and 26200.7015

Release date: October 21, 2025

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This update includes a wide variety of new features being rolled out gradually, including a redesigned Start menu that includes a scrollable All section, has new category and grid views, and which adapts to your screen size. The build also includes new features for Click to Do, which can now translate text into other languages. File Explorer now has a recommended files feature that shows content such as files you frequently use, have recently downloaded, or have added to your File Explorer Gallery.

Two bugs are fixed in this build: one that caused an ACCESS_DENIED error when users attempted to change passwords remotely on member servers or workgroup devices, even when they had the required permissions, and another in which protected content playback failed on some machines after installing KB506408.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Builds 26100.7015 and 26200.7015.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.6972

Release date: October 17, 2025

Released to: Dev Channel

In this build, those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get a new feature being rolled out slowly, which lets you add and manage your mobile devices from Settings by navigating to “Mobile Devices” under the Bluetooth & Devices section. The page allows you to view your mobile devices, add new mobile devices, and manage features such as using your device as a connected camera or accessing your device’s files in File Explorer.

Those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get two bug fixes being rolled out slowly, one for a bug that caused File Explorer to show a Catastrophic Error (0x8000FFFF) when extracting large (1.5GB+) archive files, and another that sometimes caused an old white toolbar to randomly appear in File Explorer.

There are five known issues in this build, including one in which the scrollbar and footer are missing in File Explorer when text is scaled in the copy dialog in dark mode.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.6972.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27971 

Release date: October 16, 2025

Released to: Canary Channel

In this build, the Notification Center can be used on secondary monitors. You’ll be able to see your calendar on any of your monitors and open Notification Center on any of them by clicking the date and time in the system tray of your taskbar. Note that this functionality will be rolled out gradually.

A variety of bugs have been fixed, including one in which File Explorer crashed when transferring files to a network drive.

There are three known issues in this build, including one in which sleep and shutdown aren’t working correctly for some Insiders.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27971.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.6780 

Release date: October 10, 2025

Released to: Beta Channel

In this build, those with Copilot+ PCs who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get a handful of changes and new features, including one in Settings in which more results appear in the search flyout and let you quickly modify the settings you’re searching for.

Those with any PCs who have turned the toggle on get several changes, including a new OneDrive icon in Accounts and Homepages in Settings, and the return of the ability to enable Administrator Protection via Windows Security under Account protection.

The same group gets a variety of bug fixes, including one for an issue in the previous flight in which File Explorer frequently crashed, and another that was causing the Start menu to unexpectedly scroll to the top when interacting with it.

There are four known issues in this build, including one in which the scrollbar and footer are missing in File Explorer when text is scaled in the copy dialog in dark mode.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.6780.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.6780 

Release date: October 10, 2025

Released to: Dev Channel

This update is identical to Build 26120.6780 for the Beta Channel, detailed above.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.6780.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27965

Release date: October 8, 2025

Released to: Canary Channel

This update introduces a new scrollable Start menu, with “All” on the top level, so apps are accessible without having to navigate to a secondary page. There are also new category and grid views to browse and launch your installed apps in the “All” section. The new menu adapts its size based on your device’s screen size.

There are also several bug fixes, including one in which the taskbar was not autohiding correctly.

There are four known issues in this build, including one in which Settings may crash when accessing drive information under Settings > System > Storage. This also impacts accessing the drive information from the properties when you right-click a drive in File Explorer.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27965.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27959

Release date: October 6, 2025

Released to: Canary Channel

This update introduces the option to move the hardware indicators for brightness, volume, airplane mode, and virtual desktops to different positions on your screen, including the current bottom position and new top-left and top-center positions.

There are also a variety of bug fixes, including for one in which icons and text sometimes overlapped on the desktop when using increased text scaling.

There is one known issue in this build, in which sleep and shutdown aren’t working correctly for some Insiders.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27959.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.6772

Release date: October 6, 2025

Released to: Beta Channel

In this build, those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get a variety of new features, including Image Object select for Click to Do in Copilot+ PCs, in which you can   hover over your image to preview selectable areas. Once selected, you can copy and paste your object into other apps or use it to kick off a chat with Copilot. Also included are improvements to dark mode for File Explorer for all PCs and the ability to use peripheral fingerprint sensors with Windows Hello. These changes are rolling out gradually.

The same group gets a variety of bugs fixed, including one in which Encrypted File System (EFS) related dialogs in File Explorer weren’t responding to increased text scaling. The bug fixes are rolling out gradually.

There are five known issues in this build, including one in which some searches may show unexpected text instead of the expected results and images.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.6772.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.6772 

Release date: October 6, 2025

Released to: Dev Channel

This update is identical to Build 26120.6772, detailed above.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.6772.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.6760

Release date: September 29, 2025

Released to: Beta Channel

In this build, those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get a variety of new features, including the ability to do a network speed test straight from the taskbar. You can launch it via the Wi-Fi and Cellular Quick Settings pages or by right-clicking the network icon in the system tray. The tool opens in your default browser and supports testing Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and cellular connections. It helps in assessing network performance and troubleshooting.

The same group gets a variety of bug fixes, including for an issue in which the battery icon got out of sync with the actual charging state — for example, it would show that you weren’t plugged in when you were.

Everyone in the Beta Channel gets a variety of bug fixes, including one for developers that addresses an issue in which PIX on Windows was unable to play back GPU captures. 

There are six known issues in this build, including one in which some searches may show unexpected text instead of the expected results and images.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.6760.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.6760 

Release date: September 29, 2025

Released to: Dev Channel

This build is for those who have already upgraded to Windows 11 version 25H2.

In this build, those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get a variety of new features, including the ability to do a network speed test straight from the taskbar. You can launch it via the Wi-Fi and Cellular Quick Settings pages or by right-clicking the network icon in the system tray. The tool opens in your default browser and supports testing Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and cellular connections. It helps in assessing network performance and troubleshooting.

The same group gets a variety of bug fixes, including for an issue in which the battery icon got out of sync with the actual charging state — for example, it would show that you weren’t plugged in when you were.

Everyone in the Dev Channel gets a variety of bug fixes, including one for developers that addresses an issue in which PIX on Windows was unable to play back GPU captures. 

There are six known issues in this build, including one in which some searches may show unexpected text instead of the expected results and images.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.6760.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27954

Release date: September 25, 2025

Released to: Canary Channel

This build includes, in Microsoft’s words, “a small set of general improvements and fixes that improve the overall experience for Insiders running” Windows. It also includes fixes one bug in which you might not be able to connect to shared files and folders if you were using the Server Message Block (SMB) v1 protocol on NetBIOS over TCP/IP NetBIOS (NetBT) after the latest updates.

There is one known issue in this build, in which PIX on Windows is unable to play back GPU captures on this OS version. This will be addressed by a new PIX release, estimated to arrive by the end of September. In the meantime, if you are affected, you can use the “Send Feedback” button in PIX or contact Microsoft on the DirectX Discord server and get help via private builds.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27954.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.6690

Release date: September 19, 2025

Released to: Beta Channel

For those who have Copilot+ PCs and have turned on a toggle to receive the latest update, this build gradually rolls out several new features, including one in which Click to Do can let users translate on-screen text with just a few clicks. 

All PCs that have turned a toggle on to receive the latest updates get a variety of bug fixes rolled out gradually, including one in which File Explorer became unresponsive if a UNC server name was directly typed into address bar. There are 10 known issues in this build, including one in which the placeholder text in the Settings search box may appear vertically misaligned.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.6690.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.6690

Release date: September 19, 2025

Released to: Dev Channel

This build is for those who have already upgraded to Windows 11 version 25H2. 

For those who have Copilot+ PCs and have turned on a toggle to receive the latest update, this build gradually rolls out several new features, including one in which Click to Do can let you translate on-screen text with just a few clicks. 

All PCs which have turned a toggle on to receive the latest updates get a variety of bug fixes rolled out gradually, including one in which File Explorer became unresponsive if a UNC server name was directly typed into address bar. There are 10 known issues in this build, including one in which the placeholder text in the Settings search box may appear vertically misaligned.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.6690.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27950

Release date: September 19, 2025

Released to: Canary Channel

This build includes, in Microsoft’s words, “a small set of general improvements and fixes that improve the overall experience for Insiders running” Windows. In addition, Advanced Settings will revert to the previous “For Developers” experience after updating to this build. 

There are also a number of bug fixes, including one in which the app preview windows in the taskbar became misaligned (away from the app icon you’d clicked / hovered over) after a display resolution change. 

There are two known issues in this build, including one for developers in which PIX on Windows is unable to play back GPU captures. This will be addressed by a new PIX release, estimated to arrive by the end of September. In the meantime, anyone impacted can use the “Send Feedback” button in PIX or contact Microsoft on the DirectX Discord server and Microsoft can help provide private builds.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27950.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Builds 26100.6713 and 26200.6713

Release date: September 12, 2025

Released to: Release Preview Channel

Build 26100.6713 is for those on Windows 11 24H2, and 26200.6713 is for those on Windows 25H2.

These builds gradually roll out a large number of new features, including AI actions in File Explorer for editing images or summarizing documents, and the ability to pin favorite apps in the Windows share window to quickly access them when you need them.

The builds fix several bugs immediately, including one that disrupted Windows Update for those using Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). Additionally, several bug fixes are being gradually rolled out, including for a bug in which when Windows Sandbox was enabled, the VmmemCmFirstBoot process may have consumed large amounts of CPU after login, causing your PC to become unresponsive.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Builds 26100.6713 and 26200.6713.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.6682

Release date: September 12, 2025

Released to: Beta Channel

For those who have Copilot+ PCs and have turned the toggle on to receive the latest update, this build gradually rolls out a new Copilot prompt box in Click to Do designed to streamline interaction with Microsoft Copilot.

New emoji from Emoji 16.0 are being gradually rolled out in the emoji panel for those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates.

The same group also gets a variety of bug fixes rolled out gradually, including for one that caused some PCs to bug check (green screen) while hibernating, and another in which the Shared section in File Explorer Home was visible even if there was no content to display.

There are seven known issues in this build, including one in which the placeholder text in the Settings search box may appear vertically misaligned.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.6682.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.6682

Release date: September 12, 2025

Released to: Dev Channel

This build is for those who have already upgraded to Windows 11 version 25H2.

For those who have Copilot+ PCs and have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build gradually rolls out a new Copilot prompt box in Click to Do designed to streamline interaction with Microsoft Copilot. New emoji from Emoji 16.0 are also being gradually rolled out to the same group.

The same group also gets a variety of bug fixes rolled out gradually, including for one that caused some PCs to bug check (green screen) while hibernating, and another in which the Shared section in File Explorer Home was visible even if there was no content to display.

There are seven known issues in this build, including one in which the placeholder text in the Settings search box may appear vertically misaligned.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.6682.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27943

Release date: September 11, 2025

Released to: Canary Channel

This build includes, in Microsoft’s words, “a small set of general improvements and fixes that improve the overall experience for Insiders running” Windows.

There are also a number of bug fixes, including for a bug that caused Settings > System > Storage > Temporary files to get stuck when scanning files. This issue also caused the entry to clean up previous Windows Installations to not show in Storage Settings.

There are five known issues in this build, including one in which audio stops working and Device Manager shows one or more devices with a yellow exclamation mark, including “ACPI Audio Compositor” and others. Selecting Properties on these devices will show “Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing.”

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27943.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27938

Release date: September 8, 2025

Released to: Canary Channel

This build introduces AI actions into File Explorer. These offer new capabilities when you right-click a file, such as editing a graphic or summarizing a Word document. For now, there are four of them, all related to image files. You can perform a Bing search based on an image file, blur the background in an image, erase objects in an image, and remove the background in an image.

A number of bugs have been fixed, including one that caused Task Manager to freeze when going to the performance section, and another in which the red color used for a low space drive in This PC was unexpectedly light colored.

The build has five known issues, including one in which audio stops working and Device Manager shows one or more devices with a yellow exclamation mark.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27938.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.5790 

Release date: September 5, 2025

Released to: Beta Channel

For those who have Copilot+ PCs, this build introduces fluid dictation, which makes voice-based dictation easier. It automatically corrects grammar, punctuation, and filler words as you speak, reducing the need for manual editing. In addition, being rolled out on supported Copilot+ PCs is the ability to use Studio Effect’s AI-powered camera enhancements with an additional, alternative camera — such as a USB webcam or your laptop’s built-in rear camera.

Those in the Beta Channel who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get new on-hover actions in File Manager Home for faster file management.

The same group also gets a variety of bug fixes rolled out gradually, including one for a bug in which the right-click context menu in File Explorer sometimes unexpectedly switched back and forth between the normal initial view and “Show more options” with each right-click when certain apps were installed.

There are five known issues in this build, including one in which for some users, the Shared section in File Explorer Home may be visible even if there is no content to display.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.5790.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.5790 

Release date: September 5, 2025

Released to: Dev Channel

This build appears to be identical to Build 26120.5790 for the Beta Channel, detailed above.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.5790.)

Windows 11 version 25H2

Release date: August 29, 2025

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This is an early preview of next major Windows 11 release, version 25H2. Among its improvements is allowing IT admins to remove select pre-installed Microsoft Store apps via Group Policy/MDM CSP on Enterprise/EDU devices. Version 25H2 also removes PowerShell 2.0 and Windows Management Instrumentation command-line (WMIC) from Windows 11. 

Commercial customers enrolled in the Windows Insider Program for Business can use the release to begin validating Windows 11 25H2 on PCs in their organizations. For these customers, Windows 11 25H2 is available through Windows Update for Business (WUfB) and Windows Server Update Service (WSUS).  You can get more information about deploying prerelease feature updates using these deployment methods. 

Get more info about Windows 11 version 25H2.

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.5770

Release date: August 29, 2025

Released to: Beta Channel

For those who have Copilot+ PCs, this build introduces a new text action in Click to Do that lets you highlight any simple table from a source and immediately send it to Excel, copy, or share it, without retyping a single cell. You can do this from any document with an embedded table, such as a school calendar from a photo, a table shared over Teams in a meeting, and others.

Those in the Beta Channel who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get several new features and improvements, including one in Narrator called Braille viewer that allows you to see on-screen textual and Braille representation of the output shown on a refreshable Braille display.

The same group also gets a variety of bug fixes rolled out gradually, including for a bug that caused explorer.exe to crash when using Alt + Tab for some Insiders.

There are four known issues in this build, including one in which for some users, the Shared section in File Explorer Home may be visible even if there is no content to display.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.5770.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5770

Release date: August 29, 2025

Released to: Dev Channel

For those who have Copilot+ PCs, this build introduces a new text action in Click to Do that lets you highlight any simple table from a source and immediately send it to Excel, copy, or share it, without retyping a single cell. You can do this from any document with an embedded table, such as a school calendar from a photo, a table shared over Teams in a meeting, and others.

Those in the Dev Channel who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get several new features and improvements, including one in Narrator called Braille viewer that allows you to see on-screen textual and Braille representation of the output shown on a refreshable Braille display.

The same group also gets a variety of bug fixes rolled out gradually, including for a bug that caused explorer.exe to crash when using Alt + Tab for some Insiders.

There are four known issues in this build, including one in which for some users, the Shared section in File Explorer Home may be visible even if there is no content to display.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5770.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27934

Release date: August 29, 2025

Released to: Canary Channel

This build includes, in Microsoft’s words, “a small set of general improvements and fixes that improve the overall experience” on Windows.

There are also a number of bug fixes, including one for a bug that caused an increase in DWM crashes in the previous build (which could lead to you seeing a black flash).

There are three known issues in this build, including one in which the red color used for a low space drive in This PC may be unexpectedly light colored. Some of the other colors may also be incorrect, including that black instead of a more visible color is used for space remaining.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27934.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.5761

Release date: August 22, 2025

Released to: Beta Channel

Those in the Beta Channel who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get several new features rolled out gradually, including one that will let you seamlessly resume using apps from your Android phone on your Windows 11 PC, starting with the Spotify app.

The same group also gets a variety of bug fixes rolled out gradually, including one that addresses an issue in which the new “Copy current user settings to the welcome screen and system accounts” setting under Time & Language > Language & Region crashed Settings for some Insiders.

There are four known issues in this build, including one in which for some users, the Shared section in File Explorer Home may be visible even if there is no content to display.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.5761.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5761

Release date: August 22, 2025

Released to: Dev Channel

Those in the Dev Channel who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get several new features rolled out gradually, including one that will let you seamlessly resume using apps from your Android phone on your Windows 11 PC, starting with the Spotify app.

The same group also gets a variety of bug fixes rolled out gradually, including one that addresses an issue in which the new “Copy current user settings to the welcome screen and system accounts” setting under Time & Language > Language & Region crashed Settings for some Insiders.

There are four known issues in this build, including one in which for some users, the Shared section in File Explorer Home may be visible even if there is no content to display.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5761.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27928

Release date: August 20, 2025

Released to: Canary Channel

This build includes a variety of minor changes, including moving time and language settings from Control Panel to Settings. For instance, you can change your time server in Settings > Time & language > Date & time under “Additional settings.”

A number of bugs have also been fixed, including one in which File Explorer preview windows sometimes appeared when hovering over unrelated app icons in the taskbar.

There are four known issues in this build, including one in which launching cmd non-elevated from the Run dialog may open in Windows Console Host rather than Windows Terminal, even if Windows Terminal is your default terminal app. If you’re experiencing this, you can type wt into Run to launch Windows Terminal directly.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27928.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.5751

Release date: August 15, 2025

Released to: Beta Channel

This build introduces new selection modes in Click to Do for those with Copilot+ PCs. The new modes allow you to select multiple different entity types in a single gesture.

Those in the Beta Channel who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get a variety of new features rolled out gradually, including one that updates the “Open with” section of the File Explorer context menu when right-clicking a file to remove the accent colored backplate behind packaged app icons in the list (for example, for Snipping Tool). The icons should now be bigger and easier to see.

The same group gets a variety of bug fixes rolled out gradually, including one for an issue in which the “Hide this pane” option for the mobile device companion for the Start menu was difficult to see if a custom accent color had been enabled.

There are five known issues in this build, including one in which some Windows Insiders may experience a rollback trying to install this update with a 0x80070005 in Windows Update.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.5751.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5751

Release date: August 15, 2025

Released to: Dev Channel

This build introduces new selection modes in Click to Do for those with Copilot+ PCs. The new modes allow you to select multiple different entity types in a single gesture.

Those in the Dev Channel who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get a variety of new features rolled out gradually, including one that updates the “Open with” section of the File Explorer context menu when right-clicking a file to remove the accent colored backplate behind packaged app icons in the list (for example, for Snipping Tool). The icons should now be bigger and easier to see.

The same group gets a variety of bug fixes rolled out gradually, including one for an issue in which the “Hide this pane” option for the mobile device companion for the Start menu was difficult to see if a custom accent color had been enabled.

There are six known issues in this build, including one in which some Windows Insiders may experience a rollback trying to install this update with a 0x80070005 in Windows Update. 

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5751.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27924

Release date: August 14, 2025

Released to: Canary Channel

This build includes a variety of new features for Copilot+ PCs being rolled out gradually, including previews of Recall and Click-to-Do, as well as an improved Windows Search, agents to make it easier to make changes in Settings, and live captions with real-time translation.

In addition, all PCs get new advanced settings available via Settings > System > Advanced. Notable among the additions are a new Advanced page for fine-grained control.

There are also several bug fixes, including for a bug in which Remote Desktop only used your primary monitor even if it was configured to use multiple monitors.

There are six known issues in this build, including one in which if you are joining the Canary Channel on a new Copilot+ PC from the Dev Channel, Release Preview Channel, or retail, you will lose Windows Hello PIN and biometrics to sign into your PC. You should be able to re-create your PIN by clicking Set up my PIN.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27924.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26100.5061 (KB5064081)

Release date: August 14, 2025

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build gradually rolls out a large number of new features, including one for Copilot+ PCs in which Windows Recall opens to a personalized homepage that shows you your recent activity and top-used apps and websites, making it easy to pick up where you left off.

The build also fixes several bugs, including one that prevented some system recovery features from working properly due to a temporary file sharing conflict. This affected certain device management tools and disrupted key functions on some devices.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26100.5061.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27919

Release date: August 8, 2025

Released to: Canary Channel

This build brings several Windows Search settings into a single page, via Settings > Privacy & security > Search. It also fixes a variety of bugs, including one in which File Explorer sometimes crashed when trying to view the digital signatures tab in the properties for a file.

There are six known issues in this build, including one in which if you are joining the Canary Channel on a new Copilot+ PC from the Dev Channel, Release Preview Channel, or retail, you will lose Windows Hello PIN and biometrics to sign into your PC. You should be able to re-create your PIN by clicking Set up my PIN.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27919.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5742

Release date: August 8, 2025

Released to: Dev Channel

Those in the Dev Channel who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get a variety of changes being gradually rolled out, including one in which the mobile device companion gets an updated layout that lets you access more information from Start. You can now scroll to access more recent activity items, including messages, calls, photos, mobile app updates and more.

In addition, the same group gets a variety of bug fixes rolled out gradually, including for a bug in which the tooltips in File Explorer unexpectedly stayed visible.

There are nine known issues in this build, including one in which in dark mode, the colors for certain items may be incorrect — for example, the red color used for a low-space drive in This PC may be unexpectedly light colored.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5742.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.5742

Release date: August 8, 2025

Released to: Beta Channel

Those in the Beta Channel who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get a variety of new features rolled out gradually, including one in which six time and language settings are being moved from Control Panel to Settings.

The same group also gets a variety of bug fixes rolled out gradually, including for a bug in which the tooltips in File Explorer sometimes unexpectedly stayed visible.

There are seven known issues in this build, including one in which live captions sometimes crash when you attempt to use live translation on a Copilot+ PC.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.5742.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.5733 

Release date: August 1, 2025

Released to: Beta Channel

For Insiders in the Beta Channel who are signed in with a work or school account (Entra ID) and have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, File Explorer will begin showing people icons under the “Activity” column on File Explorer Home and on “Recommended” at the top of File Explorer Home. When you hover or click over a people icon, it will display the Live Persona Card for that person from Microsoft 365.

Those in the Beta Channel who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates also get a variety of bug fixes rolled out gradually, including one that addresses an issue that caused the Start menu to crash for some Insiders.

There are seven known issues in this build, including one in which live captions sometimes crash when you attempt to use live translation on a Copilot+ PC.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.5733.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5733

Release date: August 1, 2025

Released to: Dev Channel

For Insiders in the Dev Channel who are signed in with a work or school account (Entra ID) and have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, File Explorer will begin showing people icons under the “Activity” column on File Explorer Home and on “Recommended” at the top of File Explorer Home. When you hover or click over a people icon, it will display the Live Persona Card for that person from Microsoft 365.

In addition, those in the Dev Channel who have opted to receive the latest updates get a variety of bug fixes rolled out gradually, including one that addresses an issue that caused the Start menu to crash for some Insiders.

There are nine known issues in this build, including one in which in dark mode, the colors for certain items may be incorrect — for example, the red color used for a low-space drive in This PC may be unexpectedly light colored.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5733.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27913

Release date: July 30, 2025

Released to: Canary Channel

This build, according to Microsoft, “includes a small set of general improvements and fixes that improve the overall experience for Insiders running this build on their PCs.”

It also fixes a variety of bugs, including one in Settings in which the Windows Vista boot sound was unexpectedly being used instead of the Windows 11 boot sound.

There are two known issues in this build, including one in which if you are joining the Canary Channel on a new Copilot+ PC from the Dev Channel, Release Preview Channel, or retail, you will lose Windows Hello PIN and biometrics to sign into your PC. You should be able to re-create your PIN by clicking Set up my PIN.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27913.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.5722 

Release date: July 28, 2025

Released to: Beta Channel

In this build, AMD- and Intel-powered Copilot+ PCs get a new AI-based agent that will change your settings when you ask it to customize your PC in some way. You can describe what you need help with, such as “how to control my PC by voice” or “my mouse pointer is too small,” and the agent will recommend the right steps you can take to address the issue. The agent uses AI to understand your intent, and with your permission, it automates and executes tasks on your behalf. It works only if your primary display language is set to English.

In addition, those in the Beta Channel who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get several new features rolled out gradually, including one in which Windows can apply enterprise pins more quickly to the taskbar when initiated by the IT admins. It reduces the gap between an IT admin applying the pinning policy and when their users see a pin on their taskbar. Today, the policy only applies when Explorer restarts. With this change, the gap is only up to ~8 hours (policy refresh interval) and sidesteps the Explorer restart requirement.

The same group also gets a variety of bug fixes rolled out gradually, including one that addresses problems (such as not supporting the swipe-up gesture) with using touch to navigate the new Start menu.

Everyone in the Beta Channel gets a single fix for a bug in which external graphics cards connected over Thunderbolt were unexpectedly not discoverable in some cases.

There are four known issues in this build, including one in which live captions sometimes crash when you attempt to use live translation on a Copilot+ PC.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.5722.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5722 

Release date: July 28, 2025

Released to: Dev Channel

This build is identical to Build 26120.5722 for the Beta Channel. See the listing above for details.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5722.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27909

Release date: July 25, 2025

Released to: Canary Channel

This build, according to Microsoft, “includes a small set of general improvements and fixes that improve the overall experience for Insiders running this build on their PCs.”

It also fixes a variety of bugs, including one in Settings in which the the battery percentage was missing from the top of System > Power & Battery.

There are five known issues in this build, including one in which if you are joining the Canary Channel on a new Copilot+ PC from the Dev Channel, Release Preview Channel, or retail, you will lose Windows Hello PIN and biometrics to sign into your PC. You should be able to re-create your PIN by clicking Set up my PIN.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27909.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.4741

Release date: July 18, 2025

Released to: Beta Channel

In this build, AMD- and Intel-powered Copilot+ PCs get a new “describe image” action in Click to Do that shows detailed descriptions of images, charts, and graphs, offering a quick overview of the visual content. Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PCs received the feature previously.

In addition, those in the Beta Channel who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get several new features rolled out gradually, including one in which you can more easily find and use lock screen widgets. The feature can be enabled or disabled with the Discover widgets toggle under Settings > Personalization > Lock screen.

The same group also gets two bug fixes rolled out gradually, including for a bug in which Notification Center content sometimes got clipped if you’d enabled the clock in Notification Center.

There are eight known issues in this build, including one in which using touch to navigate the new Start menu may not work reliably. For example, it currently does not support the swipe-up gesture.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.4741.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5710

Release date: July 18, 2025

Released to: Dev Channel

In this build, AMD- and Intel-powered Copilot+ PCs get a new “describe image” action in Click to Do that shows detailed descriptions of images, charts, and graphs, offering a quick overview of the visual content. Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PCs have already received the feature.

Those in the Dev Channel who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get a variety of new features rolled out gradually, including one that offers suggestions to help you discover new widgets. The feature can be enabled or disabled using the Discover widgets toggle under Settings > Personalization > Lock screen.

In addition, a variety of bug fixes are being rolled out gradually to the same group, including one that fixes an underlying issue with dbgcore.dll, which led to explorer.exe and some other apps crashing.

There are eight known issues in this build, including one in which multiple error pop-ups about unexpected elements may appear when opening Group Policy Editor.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5710.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27902

Release date: July 17, 2025

Released to: Canary Channel

This build, according to Microsoft, “includes a small set of general improvements and fixes that improve the overall experience for Insiders running this build on their PCs.”

It also fixes two bugs, including one in which the Camera app got stuck on some PCs after switching between front and back camera.

There are six known issues in this build, including one in which if you are joining the Canary Channel on a new Copilot+ PC from the Dev Channel, Release Preview Channel, or retail, you will lose Windows Hello PIN and biometrics to sign into your PC. You should be able to re-create your PIN by clicking Set up my PIN.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27902.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5702

Release date: July 14, 2025

Released to: Dev Channel

In this build, Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PCs get a new “describe image” action in Click to Do, which shows detailed descriptions of images, charts and graphs, offering a quick overview of the visual content. Support for AMD and Intel-powered Copilot+ PCs will be coming soon.

In addition, those in the Dev Channel who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get a variety of bug fixes rolled out gradually, including Administrator protection, a security feature that aims to protect free floating admin rights for administrator users allowing them to still perform all admin functions with just-in-time admin privileges. This feature is off by default and needs to be enabled via Windows Security under Account protection or via group policy.

The same group gets a variety of bug fixes rolled out gradually, including one for a bug that caused random File Explorer preview windows to appear when hovering over unrelated app icons in the taskbar.

There are eight known issues in this build, including one in which multiple error pop-ups about unexpected elements may appear when opening Group Policy Editor.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5702.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.4733

Release date: July 14, 2025

Released to: Beta Channel

In this build, Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PCs get a new “describe image” action in Click to Do, which shows detailed descriptions of images, charts, and graphs, offering a quick overview of the visual content. Support for AMD and Intel-powered Copilot+ PCs will be coming soon.

In addition, those in the Beta Channel who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get a variety of bug fixes rolled out gradually, including Administrator protection, a security feature that aims to protect free floating admin rights for administrator users, allowing them to still perform all admin functions with just-in-time admin privileges. This feature is off by default and needs to be enabled via Windows Security under Account protection or via group policy.

A variety of bug fixes are being rolled out gradually to the same group, including one that addresses an issue in which app updates sometimes caused the icons for app shortcuts pinned to the desktop to become white pages rather than proper thumbnail images.

There are eight known issues in this build, including one in which using touch to navigate the new Start menu may not work reliably. For example, it currently does not support the swipe-up gesture.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.4733.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27898

Release date: July 11, 2025

Released to: Canary Channel

This build introduces Quick machine recovery, a feature introduced as part of the Windows Resiliency Initiative at Ignite 2024. When enabled, it automatically detects and fixes widespread issues on Windows 11 devices using the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE). This reduces downtime and avoids the need for manual fixes. If a device experiences a widespread boot issue, it enters WinRE, connects to the internet, and Microsoft can deliver a targeted fix through Windows Update. IT admins can enable or customize this experience for their organization through the Intune Settings Catalog UI using the RemoteRemediation CSP.

There are five known issues in this build, including one in which if you are joining the Canary Channel on a new Copilot+ PC from the Dev Channel, Release Preview Channel, or retail, you will lose Windows Hello PIN and biometrics to sign into your PC. You should be able to re-create your PIN by clicking Set up my PIN.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27898.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26100.4762 (KB5062660)

Release date: July 10, 2025

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build gradually rolls out a number of new features, including one for admins in which the Configure Start Pins policy now includes an option to apply Start menu pins only once. This means users will receive the admin Start menu pins on their first sign-in (day 0), but afterward can personalize their pinned layout, and those changes will be retained. This policy can also be applied through group policy, in addition to the existing Configuration Service Provider (CSP).

In addition, several bug fixes are being immediately rolled out, including one that addresses an issue in which File Explorer Home unexpectedly displayed only a single folder (for example, Desktop), rather than the expected content with recent files.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26100.4762.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27891 

Release date: July 3, 2025

Released to: Canary Channel

In this build, Windows PowerShell 2.0 has been removed. A number of bugs have also been fixed, including one in which the “Reset this PC” option under Settings > System > Recovery did not work.

There are three known issues in this build, including one in which if you are joining the Canary Channel on a new Copilot+ PC from the Dev Channel, Release Preview Channel, or retail, you will lose Windows Hello PIN and biometrics to sign into your PC. You should be able to re-create your PIN by clicking Set up my PIN.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27891.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.4520

Release date: June 27, 2025

Released to: Beta Channel

Those in the Beta Channel who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get new features being rolled out gradually, including 1Password passkey integration in beta.

The same group also gets a variety of bug fixes rolled out gradually, including one for a bug in which File Explorer Home crashed, potentially also making File Explorer crash on launch, since Home is the default section for File Explorer.

There are seven known issues in this build, including one in which using touch to navigate the new Start menu may not work reliably. For example, it currently does not support the swipe-up gesture.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.4520.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5670

Release date: June 27, 2025

Released to: Dev Channel

Those in the Dev Channel who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get new features being rolled out gradually, including 1Password passkey integration in beta.

The same group also gets a variety of bug fixes rolled out gradually, including one for a bug in which File Explorer Home crashed, potentially also making File Explorer crash on launch, since Home is the default section for File Explorer.

Everyone in the Dev Channel gets two bug fixes, including one that addresses the Windows Vista boot sound playing instead of the Windows 11 boot sound.

There are seven known issues in this build, including one in which using touch to navigate the new Start menu may not work reliably. For example, it currently does not support the swipe-up gesture.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5670.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.4452

Release date: June 23, 2025

Released to: Beta Channel

In this build, Copilot+ PCs get a new Windows Recall homepage, which shows you your most recent snapshots so you can quickly return to what you were previously doing, and also displays the top three apps and websites you have spent the most time on in the past 24 hours.

In addition, those in the Beta Channel who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get new features being rolled out gradually, including the option to move the hardware indicators for brightness, volume, airplane mode, and virtual desktops to different positions on your screen.

Some additional improvements are being gradually rolled out to the same group, including the addition of a Boolean to the Configure Start Pins policy to allow admins to apply Start menu pins once. This means that a user will receive admin pins on day 0 but can then make any changes to their Start pinned layout and have those safeguarded. These changes can be optionally applied through the existing configuration service provider (CSP).

A handful of bug fixes are rolling out to the same group, including one that addresses an issue in which File Explorer Home only showed a single folder (like Desktop) and nothing else for some people.

Several bugs have been fixed for everyone in the Beta Channel, including one in which the Windows Vista boot sound played instead of the Windows 11 boot sound.

There are 10 known issues in this build, including one in which after you do a PC reset under Settings > System > Recovery, your build version may incorrectly show as Build 26100 instead of Build 26120. This will not prevent you from getting future Beta Channel updates, which will resolve this issue.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.4452.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5661

Release date: June 23, 2025

Released to: Dev Channel

In this build, Copilot+ PCs get a new Windows Recall homepage, which shows you your most recent snapshots so you can quickly return to what you were previously doing, and also displays the top three apps and websites you have spent the most time on in the past 24 hours.

In addition, those in the Dev Channel who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get new features being rolled out gradually, including the option to move the hardware indicators for brightness, volume, airplane mode, and virtual desktops to different positions on your screen.

The same group also gets a variety of bug fixes rolled out gradually, including one for a bug in which the File Explorer Home only showed a single folder (like Desktop) and nothing else for some people.

Everyone in the Dev Channel gets several bug fixes, including for one in which the Windows Vista boot sound played instead of the Windows 11 boot sound.

There are 10 known issues in this build, including one in which after you do a PC reset under Settings > System > Recovery, your build version may incorrectly show as Build 26100 instead of Build 26200. This will not prevent you from getting future Dev Channel updates, which will resolve this issue.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5661.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27881 

Release date: June 19, 2025

Released to: Canary Channel

This build introduces speech recapto Narrator. It lets you keep track of what Narrator has said and offers access to it for quick reference. With it, you can quickly access spoken content, follow along with live transcription, and copy what Narrator last said, using keyboard shortcuts.

A number of bugs have also been fixed, including one in which File Explorer crashed when the user tapped the View button using touch.

There are four known issues in this build, including one in which if you are joining the Canary Channel on a new Copilot+ PC from the Dev Channel, Release Preview Channel, or retail, you will lose Windows Hello PIN and biometrics to sign into your PC. You should be able to re-create your PIN by clicking Set up my PIN.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27881.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26100.4482 (KB5060829)

Release date: June 19, 2025

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build gradually rolls out a number of new features, including automatic icon resizing in the taskbar to fit more apps, and a new Screen Curtain feature that blacks out the screen while Narrator reads content aloud. Also new is the ability add custom words to the dictionary in voice access.

In addition, several bug fixes are being immediately rolled out, including one that improves the Copilot key’s reliability and resolves an issue that prevented users from restarting Copilot after using the key.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26100.4482.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.4441

Release date: June 13, 2025

Released to: Beta Channel

In this build, those with Copilot+ PCs in the European Economic area get the option to export their Recall snapshots to be shared with third-party apps and websites. When they open Recall for the first time and opt into saving snapshots, they will be shown their unique Recall export code. The Recall export code will be needed if they ever choose to export their Recall snapshots to share with a trusted app or website in the future.

Those in the Beta Channel who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get a variety of new features being gradually rolled out, including a bigger clock with seconds in the notification center.

The same group also gets a variety of bug fixes rolled out gradually, including one for an issue in which folders opened outside of File Explorer would open it in a new File Explorer tab, but the tab wasn’t put in focus.

There are nine known issues in this build, including one in which after you do a PC reset under Settings > System > Recovery, your build version may incorrectly show as Build 26100 instead of Build 26120. This will not prevent you from getting future Beta Channel updates, which will resolve this issue.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.4441.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5651

Release date: June 13, 2025

Released to: Dev Channel

In this build, Copilot+ PCs get agents that can help make it easier to find and change settings on PCs. Rather than dig through settings, you’ll be able to simply describe what you need help with like, “how to control my PC by voice” or “my mouse pointer is too small” and an agent will recommend the right steps you can take to address the issue.

In addition, those in the Dev Channel who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get a variety of new features being gradually rolled out, including a bigger clock with seconds in the notification center.

The same group also gets a variety of bug fixes rolled out gradually, including one for an issue in which folders opened outside of File Explorer would open it in a new File Explorer tab, but the tab wasn’t put in focus.

There are 13 known issues in this build, including one in which after you do a PC reset under Settings > System > Recovery, your build version may incorrectly show as Build 26100 instead of Build 26200. This will not prevent you from getting future Dev Channel updates, which will resolve this issue.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5651.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.4250 

Release date: June 9, 2025

Released to: Beta Channel

Those in the Beta Channel who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get a variety of new features being gradually rolled out, including a larger scrollable Start menu. The menu automatically resizes itself according to the size of your screen, and offers two views, category and grid. In addition, the “Search permissions” and “Searching Windows” settings pages have been combined so you can access all the Windows Search settings under a single page via Settings > Privacy & security > Search.

The same group also gets a variety of bug fixes rolled out gradually, including one for a bug in which input did not work for some Insiders, including when typing into Search, and with the Chinese pinyin IME candidate window, clipboard history, and the emoji panel.

For everyone in the Beta Channel, the build fixes a bug in which some people might have seen severe discoloration when connecting their PC to some older Dolby Vision displays.

There are nine known issues in this build, including one in which after you do a PC reset under Settings > System > Recovery, your build version may incorrectly show as Build 26100 instead of Build 26120. This will not prevent you from getting future Beta Channel updates, which will resolve this issue.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.4250.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5641

Release date: June 9, 2025

Released to: Dev Channel

Those in the Dev Channel who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get a variety of new features being gradually rolled out, including a larger scrollable Start menu. The menu automatically resizes itself according to the size of your screen, and offers two views, category and grid. In addition, the “Search permissions” and “Searching Windows” settings pages have been combined so you can access all the Windows Search settings under a single page via Settings > Privacy & security > Search.

The same group also gets a variety of bug fixes rolled out gradually, including one for a bug in which input did not work for some Insiders, including when typing into Search, and with the Chinese pinyin IME candidate window, clipboard history, and the emoji panel.

For everyone in the Dev Channel, the build fixes a bug in which some people might have seen severe discoloration when connecting their PC to some older Dolby Vision displays.

There are 12 known issues in this build, including one in which after you do a PC reset under Settings > System > Recovery, your build version may incorrectly show as Build 26100 instead of Build 26200. This will not prevent you from getting future Dev Channel updates, which will resolve this issue.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5641.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27871 

Release date: June 4, 2025

Released to: Canary Channel

In this build, IT administrators can use Microsoft Intune to control the energy saver settings on Windows 11 PCs through group policies and MDM configurations.

A number of bugs have also been fixed, including one in which when Virtualization Based Security was enabled, applications dependent on virtualization, such as VMware Workstation, lost the ability to run unless the “Windows Hypervisor Platform” Windows optional component was installed on the system.

There are two known issues in this build, including one in which if you are joining the Canary Channel on a new Copilot+ PC from the Dev Channel, Release Preview Channel, or retail, you will lose Windows Hello PIN and biometrics to sign into your PC. You should be able to re-create your PIN by clicking Set up my PIN.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27871.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.4230 

Release date: June 2, 2025

Released to: Beta Channel

Those in the Beta Channel who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get a new dedicated settings page for quick machine recovery, which can be found under System > Recovery > Quick machine recovery. This makes it easier to manage recovery options directly from Settings. This is being gradually rolled out.

A variety of bug fixes are being rolled out gradually to the same group, including one addressing a bug that caused File Explorer to crash performing various actions, such as when deleting files. 

For everyone in the Beta Channel, a bug is fixed in which when Virtualization Based Security was enabled, applications dependent on virtualization, such as VMware Workstation, would lose the ability to run unless the “Windows Hypervisor Platform” Windows optional component is installed on the system.

There are nine known issues in this build, including one in which after you do a PC reset under Settings > System > Recovery, your build version may incorrectly show as Build 26100 instead of Build 26120. This will not prevent you from getting future Beta Channel updates, which will resolve this issue.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.4230.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5622 

Release date: June 2, 2025

Released to: Dev Channel

In this build, those with Copilot+ PCs get a new action in Click to Do, Draft with Copilot in Word. Select text, press the Windows key and click simultaneously, and choose Draft with Copilot in Word. Copilot will create an initial draft based on the text.

Those in the Dev Channel who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get new features being rolled out gradually, including quick machine recovery, designed to help Windows 11 devices recover from widespread boot issues by applying remediations through the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE).

The same group also gets several bug fixes, including for an issue in which File Explorer crashed when performing various actions, such as deleting files.

There are eight known issues in this build, including one in which taskbar icons may appear small even though the setting to show smaller taskbar buttons is configured as “never.”

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5622.)

It’s all change at the top for Adobe as CEO Shantanu Narayen is stepping down after 18 years. He will relinquish the role as soon as a successor has been found, although he will continue to serve as Chairman

Narayen left as the company posted record revenue of $6.4 billion in its first quarter, with the company highlighting its AI capabilities. 

Adobe’s lead independent board director, Frank Calderoni, thanked Narayen in a written statement.

“On behalf of the Board, I want to recognize Shantanu’s contributions as CEO and architect of Adobe’s transformation over the past 18 years, and for positioning Adobe for success in the AI-driven era,” he said.

Success in the AI-driven era is not a given, though, and there are concerns whether Adobe can maintain its position in the light of advances in AI according to analysts quoted in a Bloomberg report on Adobe’s results. Grace Harmon of Emarketer told Bloomberg, “Investors will likely focus on whether incoming leadership maintains a balance between disciplined execution and aggressive AI investment, especially as competition in creative and enterprise AI intensifies.”

Remember the good old days of 2020 when Apple’s then-new M1 Macs were setting fresh records for Mac performance? You might also recall when those same Macs were described as being the fastest PCs to run Windows when using the Parallels virtualization software. 

If you recall that, and if light use of legacy Windows utilities or tools is something you still need, then it will interest you to learn that you can run Windows using Parallels on one of Apple’s new MacBook Neo systems.

Windows on Neo

In a note on its knowledge base, the Parallels team confirms the support: “Parallels Desktop runs on MacBook Neo in basic usability testing. The Parallels Engineering team has completed initial testing and confirmed that Parallels Desktop installs and virtual machines operate stably on MacBook Neo. Full validation and performance testing is ongoing, and [an] additional compatibility statement will follow if required.”

It’s not a perfect match, however, which means what you can do is a little limited. That’s because the MacBook Neo ships with just 8GB RAM, while Windows running in VM demands 4GB minimum RAM to work.

Given that when running Windows in VM you must also be running macOS on the same device, the available memory, gets used up quickly. So, you really only want to use Windows on a MacBook Neo for light and transient tasks, such as running those legacy tools and utilities I mentioned.

“For light, occasional Windows use, like a legacy business tool, or a Windows-only utility, MacBook Neo may provide an acceptable experience. For CPU- or GPU-intensive Windows applications, this computer is not the right choice,” said Parallels.

For a fistful of dollars

Apple does have other choices, which means that for $1,099 you can already pick up an M5 MacBook Air with 16GB RAM, which should make for a better experience when you need to run full Windows apps. “If demanding Windows workflows are part of your daily work, a Mac with 16 GB or more of unified memory, such as the new MacBook Air M5 or MacBook Pro, will give you a significantly better experience with Parallels Desktop,” the Parallels acknowledges. 

In a separate note, the team points out that the more powerful Macs can run Windows sufficiently well to meet the needs of DevOps engineers, creatives, and business pros.

The thing is, I think the vast majority of enterprise professionals who only really use their computers for emails, websites, services, and spreadsheets probably only also need a little Windows support for a declining number of tasks. The extent of those tasks varies, of course. Memory allocation is important and a little 8GB MacBook Neo may lack the horsepower for the specific Windows tools and services your company requires, even with Unified Memory.

You’ll have to take a look at these Macs and decide whether a MacBook Neo is right for you. 

How much Windows do you need?

I can’t help but think that the fact that you can get a Mac for $599 that also runs Windows might make sense to admins looking to provision employees with tools they will enjoy using that can also handle a bit of Microsoft during their day. Gaining Mac, Windows, and even the best of iOS (thanks to iPhone Mirroring) on one affordable system might help stretch those budget dollars, at least for some tasks.

In the end, Apple’s strategic achievement has surprised the PC industry so much that Ausus Co-CEO, SY Hsu recently called it “a shock to the entire industry,” before adding, “In fact, in the entire PC ecosystem, there have been a lot of discussions about how to compete with this product.”

Hsu rightly points out that the limited memory in the device is its Achille’s heel, which means it won’t perform that well when handling heavy workloads. That may be true, of course, but is perhaps less of a protective talisman to incumbents in this part of the consumer notebook space; the M5 MacBook Air, which costs just a few hundred dollars more, is among the most performant systems in the business right now.

The fact all of Apple’s Macs also run Windows just reinforces the business case to switch.

Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe. Also, now on Mastodon.

The FBI is so concerned about the threat of residential proxy attacks and the dangers posed by cyber criminals using the technique that it has posted guidance on its website.

Residential proxies are used by cybercriminals to reroute traffic between individuals and the websites they visit to make it appear to originate elsewhere? By taking over IoT devices, smartphones, or home routers, cybercriminals can mask their illegal online activities. But it’s not just consumers who are at risk: Enterprises can be the targets of those illegal activities — and their devices can be taken over too. Older devices are particularly soft targets.

The FBI urged enterprises to install software updates as they become available to help protect devices from being infected, and to enforce strong device policies to stop employees connecting unauthorized devices to corporate networks. It also encouraged them to segment networks, block IP addresses known to be associated with residential proxy networks, and implement stronger firewall rules.

There has been one major proxy attack already this year. In January, nine million Android devices were exposed. The threat to enterprises is deep-seated. Last month, cyber security company Spur identified vulnerable proxy exposure across 671 government entities, 263 energy and utility organizations, and nearly 1,900 education environments.

“Residential proxies are effective because they let bad actors blend into normal internet traffic. A lot of security teams know how to look for suspicious infrastructure. It gets harder when the traffic comes through real residential connections that appear legitimate on the surface,” Spur co-founder Riley Kilmer said via email.

This article first appeared on CSO.

Humanity is diving headlong into a global experiment. More than 1 billion people have a new and unprecedented source of information and cognitive guidance: artificial intelligence (AI) trained on trillions of words. 

So, how exactly are AI chatbots affecting our minds, thoughts, beliefs and opinions? 

Scientists are scrambling to find out — and reports that have come out this week offer insights into what’s going on. 

AI writing tools can influence your beliefs and opinions

Cornell University researchers published a new paper this week detailing two experiments that aimed to find out the cognitive impact of AI writing tools. 

One focused on standardized testing. But the more interesting experiment focused on controversial ideas or opinions and whether writing tools affected them. (Spoiler alert: They did.)

The researchers gamed autocomplete suggestions to either favor or oppose the death penalty, felon voting rights, fracking, or genetically modified organisms. Then they measured how much participants in the study would be swayed in their opinions by the suggestions.

What they found is that biased autocomplete changed opinions more than just reading the biased point of view. Apparently, the interactive, co-writing nature of AI autocomplete suggestions plays a crucial role in persuasion.

Also: A strong majority of participants did not believe the AI autocomplete was biased and did not believe they were influenced in their thinking. 

Even more interestingly, some participants were warned that the autocomplete was biased and it still changed their opinions. 

What makes this so interesting is that far more people use AI-based autocomplete than AI chatbots. If governments or other organizations wanted to shift public opinion, biasing AI autocomplete would probably work better than, say, large language model (LLM) grooming (where state actors like Russia can “flood the zone” with biased content picked up by AI spiders).

It’s unlikely that autocomplete tools will be tweaked to make you change your opinion about the death penalty. But the real risk is a subtle influence over time. Because AI does have biases built in. 

It turns out that AI-based writing tools can not only change your opinions and beliefs, they  can also make you bland. 

AI is homogenizing human expression

Another paper published this week — this one by three researchers at the University of Southern California — found that the use of LLM-based chatbots is erasing diversity of not only expression, but thought. The research pulls together findings from linguistics, psychology, cognitive science and computer science. 

Hundreds of millions of people now use the same small handful of AI models to write emails, draft reports, brainstorm ideas and polish their writing. Because those models were trained on massive datasets that overrepresent English, Western viewpoints and the perspectives of educated, high-income, liberal males, that tends to be the tone and style of writing, regardless of whether the user fits into that mold. 

When you ask an AI to “improve” your writing, it doesn’t just fix grammar. It nudges your words and even your ideas toward a single, dominant pattern. 

The researchers analyzed one study that generated 30,000 college admission essays using LLMs. The essays showed high semantic and lexical similarity across the board — a dramatic narrowing of the range of human expression. 

Another finding: When AI “polishes” writing — Reddit posts, news articles, academic abstracts, personal essays — the resulting texts converge so much in style and complexity that it becomes harder to guess the author’s political views, personality, gender or age. In other words, AI doesn’t just polish writing. It erases the author’s individuality. 

Also: When researchers prompt AI models to write from the perspective of a specific identity (say, a person with impaired vision), the models tend to produce stereotyped, outsider caricatures rather than authentic insider representations of that experience. 

While people tend to look at LLM chatbots as tools that help with writing, the researchers see them as “coreasoners,” meaning that they’re part of users’ thought-forming process. 

And it’s a recurring cycle. As homogenized writing proliferates, those generic texts get sucked into the training data, creating a feedback loop of ever-increasing blandness, a genericization of the world’s knowledge and perspective. As chatbots get blander, we get blander. And as we get blander, the chatbots get even blander. 

What does all this mean — and why does it matter? 

The the one big takeaway you should get from this column is this: Our thoughts, opinions, ideas and modes of expressions are linked together and strongly affected by a small handful of AI tools. 

This notion is best articulated by a concept called “distributed cognition theory,” which was developed decades before the popularization of LLM tools by cognitive anthropologist Edwin Hutchins in the 1990s and detailed in his 1995 book Cognition in the Wild.

Applied to the LLM era, the major chatbots function both as cognitive tools and also as thought partners that co-construct reality with users. They sustain, elaborate on and magnify our beliefs. And when they hallucinate, they can cause us to hallucinate, too.

Two attributes of AI chatbots magnify the effect. The first is sycophancy. They’re too agreeable and are more likely than people to just go along with the user’s beliefs. 

The second is something called “simulated intersubjective validation,” whereby AI chatbots can give users the feeling of a shared reality, even if the user’s reality isn’t necessarily shared by a large number of people. (This feeling can be especially appealing to people experiencing loneliness, social isolation, or psychosis.)

The bottom line is that LLM-based AI chatbots can influence what the public believes to be true without users even noticing or believing that that’s the case. 

Six ways to protect yourself from a world view determined by AI

There’s little any of us can do to prevent humanity’s slide into being manipulated by AI. But we can protect ourselves, and we should. Here’s how: 

1. Accept the fact that your intelligence, education and awareness of the issue does not make you immune to the influence of AI tools.
2. Don’t use autocomplete. Turn it off. Use your own words, not the hive-mind’s. 
3. Write without using AI. Understand that writing is nothing more than clarified thinking. When chatbots write for you, they also think for you. Writing without AI is the key to cultivating your own thinking, preserving and communicating your own individuality, and enhancing your worth as a professional, a citizen and a human being. 
4. Override chatbot sycophancy. Use prompt engineering to force chatbots to disagree, challenge and argue with you. I’ll even give you the prompt, which you can copy and paste into your chatbot: “You are my intellectual sparring partner. Your job is to disagree with me constructively, not to agree. For every idea I present: 1) identify and challenge hidden assumptions; 2) build a strong counter-argument; 3) stress-test my logic for flaws, logical gaps, or weaknesses; 4) offer alternative perspectives to mine; and 5) prioritize truth over consensus.”
5. Cultivate your own personal thoughts in a blog. When you have a clear thought or idea, codify it in a blog. Don’t use AI for research, editing or anything else. Even if you use AI for other purposes, make your blog an “AI-free space.” The purpose of the blog should be for you to publicly cultivate your thoughts, beliefs and opinions and assert and maintain your cognitive individuality in a world of growing sameness. I’ve done this myself and posted my thoughts about the value of blogging in a cognitive world dominated by AI. 
6. Get most of your information and ideas from good books, good journalism and good science. Avoid “consuming” content that’s presented to you by a social algorithm; instead, curate great, authentic, individual human voices using RSS. Go ahead and post on social, but don’t “consume” the posts of others. 

The science is in. AI chatbots are changing our minds, and not for the better. The good news is that you can take advantage of the AI revolution in many ways, while also protecting your own mind from being influenced by the AI hive mind. 

AI disclosure: I don’t use AI for writing. The words you see here are mine. I do use Claude 4.6 Opus via Kagi Assistant (disclosure: my son works at Kagi) — backed up by both Kagi Search, Google Search, as well as phone calls to research and fact-check. I used a word processing application called Lex, which has AI tools, and after writing the column, I used Lex’s grammar checking tools to hunt for typos and errors. Here’s why I disclose my AI use. 

So soon after Apple’s big product launches last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook shared a letter to mark the upcoming 50th anniversary since the founding of Apple on April 1, 1976.  

It is strange to see Apple grapple with the concept of an anniversary. It isn’t usually a company that does this, as it tends to focus on what it is building rather than the history its work leaves behind. “We’re not a culture that looks back,” Cook said. “So, the group of people working on this have had to kind of build a different muscle for this, as our muscle is always about what’s next. We’ve really had to work hard on this to get in a reflective state, but when you really stop and pause and think about the last 50 years, it makes your heart sing. It really does.

“I promise some celebration.”

A party of one, but still a big celebration

Cook took a look at the past in a conversation with CBS Sunday Morning correspondent David Pogue, who has written a book about Apple’s first 50 years during which he observed the need for the company to have the right people and the right organizational culture. “I think Apple is such a unique place, it’s not possible to replicate it,” he said. “I know a lot of different companies, and I think Apple is just in a party of one.”

There seems to be a real focus on “the crazy ones” in Apple’s approach to the date. “Progress comes from those who challenge convention and imagine what could be,” the company said.

Cook’s anniversary letter references the cultural challenge Apple has with anniversaries, and also suggests that it will be Apple’s customers, teams, and former employees who will get headline billing in how the company celebrates in the coming weeks. 

“We couldn’t let this milestone pass without thanking the millions of people who make Apple what it is today — our incredible teams around the world, our developer community, and every customer who has joined us on this journey. Your ideas inspire our work. Your trust drives us to do better. Your stories remind us of all we can accomplish when we think different.”

How will Apple celebrate?

This begs the question of how Apple will celebrate the date. Speaking during a recent all-hands meeting at Apple, Cook dropped some hints of what the company’s 50-year anniversary might involve.

“We’ve been going back through old archives, old photographs. We’ve been going back through the products, the services, the people, and I am struck by how much Apple has changed things, how much Apple has changed the world, how much Apple has given to the world.”

In the coming weeks, “Apple and its global community will celebrate the company’s 50th anniversary, recognizing the creativity, innovation, and impact that people around the world have made possible with Apple technology.”

That suggests the company will be focused on sharing some of the stories of what its customers have achieved during its existence. It also seems likely to embrace social media, given the company today introduced a new @helloapple handle on Instagram. (Famously, the word “Hello” appeared on the screen during the launch of the original Apple Macintosh.)

Beyond cultural reflections, some might wonder whether the anniversary will include new hardware. 

Given the very impressive recent launches – MacBooks Neo, Air, and Pro, new displays and a budget-price iPhone, that feels unlikely, but not impossible. It isn’t inconceivable the company might choose to link its fiftieth anniversary with the first glance at some of the new AI features in Siri, though doing so runs risks if that launch fails to impress.

People, not product? 

At the same time, perhaps it’s right that in its 50th year it makes sense for the company to take stock of its achievements, which fundamentally is not the tools it has created but what its audience of creative humans has achieved with them.

“Thinking different has always been at the heart of Apple,” wrote Cook. “It’s what has driven us to create products that empower people to express themselves, to connect, and to create something wonderful.” 

Ultimately, Apple’s anniversary is about the impact its technology has enabled over five decades. The comparison with the upcoming 20‑year iPhone anniversary next January will be equally revealing.

Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe. Also, now on Mastodon.

Among a range of factors leading to a wave of tech sector layoffs in 2026 is the rapid rise of artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation. Companies are reconfiguring their workforces to leverage AI for increased efficiency and reduced operating costs. This realignment and reduction is often implemented even by companies reporting strong financial performance.

But it’s not just AI leading to workforce cuts. Complementing this technological shift are ongoing economic uncertainty, inflation, and higher interest rates. This combo is driving companies to cut costs and streamline operations for increased efficiency.

According to data compiled by Layoffs.fyi, an online tracker that keep tabs on job losses in the technology sector, 123,941 tech employees were laid off at 269 companies in 2025. The site also reports that 71,981 government employees were laid off by DOGE alone, with 182,528 total federal workers laid off.

Here is a list — to be updated regularly — of some of the most prominent technology layoffs the industry has experienced recently.

Tech layoffs in 2026

• Atlassian
• Salesforce
• Oracle
• Amazon
• Ericsson
• Meta

March 12, 2026: Atlassian cuts 1,600 jobs to fund AI and enterprise expansion

Atlassian will reduce its global workforce by approximately 10%, eliminating around 1,600 roles, as the collaboration software maker redirects capital toward artificial intelligence development and enterprise sales.

March 11, 2026: Tech layoffs surpass 45,000 in early 2026

A recent analysis by RationalFX found 45,363 job cuts globally so far this year—with roughly 68% or more than 30,000 occurring in the U.S. — highlighting ongoing workforce cuts even as many tech companies report strong revenue growth.

February 10, 2026: Salesforce lays off staffers as executive leadership churn continues

Salesforce has reduced close to 1,000 roles earlier this month across teams, including marketing, product management, data analytics, and its Agentforce AI unit, Business Insider reported, quoting employees familiar with the matter.

January 30, 2026: Oracle may slash up to 30,000 jobs to fund AI data-center expansion as US banks retreat

Oracle is considering cutting 20,000 to 30,000 jobs and selling some of its activities as US banks pull back from financing the company’s AI data-center expansion, according to investment bank TD Cowen. The job cuts would free up $8 billion to $10 billion in cash flow.

January 23, 2026: Amazon layoffs expected to disproportionately hit AWS and tech talent

As the market slows down, AWS and other Amazon units are preparing for another round of layoffs, which is expected to overwhelmingly impact tech talent. An email from HR leader Beth Galetti on Jan. 28 confirmed 16,000 job cuts.

January 15, 2026: Ericsson plans to shed 1,600 jobs in Sweden

 Ericsson lans to cut some 1,600 jobs in Sweden, the telecommunications equipment maker said doubling down on recent cost-saving measures that have helped it weather a prolonged downturn in telecoms spending, Reuters reports.

January 13, 2026: Meta Plans to Cut Around 10% of Employees in Reality Labs Business

Meta plans to cut around 10 percent of the employees in its Reality Labs division who work on products including the metaverse, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions, according to The New York Times.

January 8, 2026: Multiverse cut dozens of jobs as losses widened

Kaseya laid off 5 percent of its global workforce, about 250 employees, according to CRN, as it says it is redesigning its go-to-market approach to better serve partners through “intelligent, customer-led execution and clearer customer segmentation.”

January 5, 2026: Multiverse cut dozens of jobs as losses widened

London-based edtech Multiverse cut dozens of jobs amid widening losses, company filings show, according to Sifted.

Layoffs in 2025

• Cisco
• Oracle
• Windsurf
• Intel
• Microsoft
• Crowdstrike
• HPE
• Autodesk
• HPE
• CISA
• Workday
• Salesforce
• Meta

October 28, 2025: Amazon to cut 14,000 jobs across company

Amazon will reduce its overall workforce by 14,000, cutting layers of management across the company and hiring in some areas to support its “biggest bets”.

August 18, 2025: Cisco and Oracle to cut hundreds of Bay Area jobs

Tech companies Cisco and Oracle are cutting hundreds of jobs across the Bay Area. Cisco will eliminate 221 positions at its Milpitas and San Francisco offices, effective Oct. 13. Oracle is reducing 101 positions in Santa Clara on the same date 

August 5, 2025: 3 weeks after acquiring Windsurf, Cognition offers staff the exit door

Cognition, the AI coding startup that acquired rival company Windsurf three weeks ago, laid off 30 employees last week and is offering buyouts to the roughly 200 remaining employees on the team, reports The Information.

July 25, 2025, Intel to lay off 22% of workforce, CEO Tan signals ‘no more blank checks’

Intel will reduce its workforce to 75,000 employees by the end of 2025 as new CEO Lip-Bu Tan implements sweeping changes designed to transform the struggling chipmaker

July 8, 2025, Intel layoffs begin: Chipmaker is cutting many thousands of jobs

Intel has begun laying off employees across the company. CEO Lip-Bu Tan told workers back in April to expect major layoffs at Intel in the coming months as the chipmaker slashes costs and overhauls its organization after years of technical setbacks and falling sales.

July 2, 2025: Microsoft will cut 9,000 workers

Microsoft will lay off about 9,000 employees, a source familiar with the workforce cut told CNBC.  The cuts will reportedly affect less than 4% of Microsoft’s global workforce and will impact different teams, geographies and levels of experience. This is the latest in a string of cuts the tech giant has made this year.

June 17, 2025: Intel looks to factory layoffs to return to profitability

Intel will lay off up to 20% of its manufacturing sector employees starting in July, according to media reports, as the company looks for options as it seeks a return to profitability. The cuts reportedly will be made around the world, but some of the layoffs will be closer to home, according to a report in The Oregonian citing an internal company memo from Intel manufacturing Vice President Naga Chandrasekaran.

May 7, 2025: CrowdStrike to lay off 5% of staff

CrowdStrike announced a plan to cut about 500 roles, roughly 5% of its workforce, to streamline operations and reduce costs. The cybersecurity company will incur about $36 million to $53 million in charges related to the layoffs

March 6, 2025: HPE cuts 2,500 jobs, remains committed to Juniper buy

CEO Antonio Neri told Wall Street analysts that HPE would begin implementing a cost-cutting program involving layoffs of about 2,500 employees over the next 18 months. HPE employs about 61,000 people worldwide.

Feb. 27, 2025: Autodesk to lay off 9% of workforce

Software maker Autodesk is laying off 1,350 staff. With the rise of subscription and multi-year contracts billed annually, and self-service enablement, it finds it needs fewer sales staff, CEO Andrew Anagnost said in a message to employees. And with its cloud, platform, and AI products proving most profitable, it’s concentrating its staff and investments there.

Feb. 27, 2025: HP to lay off 2,000 more

As part of an ongoing restructuring, HP plans to lay off up to another 2,000 workers. In recent weeks, the company has tried — unsuccessfully — to do away with telephone support staff by forcing callers to wait for at least 15 minutes if they refuse to use self-service support resources online. The company swiftly backtracked, but wider job cuts are still on.

Feb. 21, 2025: CISA lays off 130

Government employees get laid off too: In this case, 130 workers at the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency are being shown the door as a result of a DOGE decision. Cybersecurity experts are concerned that the cuts will harm the international collaborations that CISA has fostered, quite apart from their concerns about the security of the DOGE layoff process itself.

Feb. 5, 2025: Workday lays off 1,750

As it moves to invest more in AI and international growth, Workday is laying off 8.5% of its workforce and disposing of unused office space. Some analysts fear the cutbacks will affect the company’s customer service — unless AI can pick up the slack.

Feb. 4, 2025: Salesforce lays off over 1,000

At the same time as it’s hiring sales staff for its new artificial intelligence products, Salesforce is laying off over 1,000 workers across the company, according to Bloomberg. As of June, 2024, the company had over 72,000 employees, according to its website. Salesforce did not comment on the report. In 2024 the company reportedly laid off around 1,000 staff too, in two waves: January and July.

Jan. 14, 2025: Meta will lay off 5% of workforce

Mark Zuckerberg told Meta employees he intended to “move out the low performers faster” in an internal memo reported by Bloomberg. The memo announced that the company will lay off 5% of its staff, or around 3,600 staff, beginning Feb. 10. The company had already reduced its headcount by 5% in 2024 through natural attrition, the memo said. Among those leaving the company will be staff previously responsible for fact checking of posts on its social media platforms in the US, as the company begins relying on its users to police content.

Tech layoffs in 2024

• Equinix
• AMD
• Freshworks
• Cisco
• General Motors
• Intel
• OpenText
• Microsoft
• AWS
• Dell

Nov. 26, 2024: Equinix to cut 3% of staff

Despite intense demand for its data center capacity, Equinix is planning to lay off 3% of its workforce, or around 400 employees. The announcement followed the appointment of Adaire Fox-Martin to replace Charles Meyers as CEO and the departures of two other senior executives, CIO Milind Wagle and CISO Michael Montoya.

Nov. 13, 2024: AMD to cut 4% of workforce

AMD will lay off around 1,000 employees as it pivots towards developing AI-focused chips, it said. The move came as a surprise to staff, as the company also reported strong quarterly earnings.

Nov. 7, 2024: Freshworks lays off 660

Enterprise software vendor Freshworks laid off around 660 staff, or around 13% of its headcount, despite reporting increased revenue and profits in its fourth fiscal quarter. The company described the layoffs as a realignment of its global workforce.

Sept. 17, 2024: Cisco lays off 6,000

After laying off around 4,200 staff in February, Cisco is at it again, laying off another 6,000 or around 7% of its workforce. Among the divisions affected were its threat intelligence unit, Talos Security.

Aug. 20, 2024: General Motors lays off 1,000 software staff

More than 1,000 software and services staff are on the way out at General Motors, signalling that it could be rethinking its digital transformation strategy. In an internal memo, the company said that it was moving resources to its highest-priority work and flattening hierarchies.

August 1, 2024: Intel removes 15,000 roles

Intel plans to cut its workforce by around 15% to reduce costs after a disastrous second quarter. Revenue for the three months to June 29 stagnated at around $12.8 billion, but net income fell 85% to $83 million, prompting CEO Pat Gelsinger to bring forward a company-wide meeting in order to announce that 15,000 staff would lose their jobs. “This is an incredibly hard day for Intel as we are making some of the most consequential changes in our company’s history,” Gelsinger wrote in an email to staff, continuing: “Our revenues have not grown as expected — and we’ve yet to fully benefit from powerful trends, like AI. Our costs are too high, our margins are too low. We need bolder actions to address both — particularly given our financial results and outlook for the second half of 2024, which is tougher than previously expected.”

July 4, 2024: OpenText to lay off 1,200

OpenText said it will lay off 1,200 staff, or about 1.7% of its workforce, in a bid to save around $100 million annually. It plans to hire new sales and engineering staff in other areas in 2025, it said.

June 4, 2024: Microsoft lays off staff in Azure division

Microsoft laid off staff in several teams supporting its cloud services, including Azure for Operations and Mission Engineering. The company didn’t say exactly how many staff were leaving.

April 4, 2024: Amazon downsizes AWS in a fresh cost-cutting round

Amazon announced hundreds of layoffs in the sales and marketing teams of its AWS cloud services division — and also in the technology development teams for its physical retail stores, as it stepped back from efforts to generalize the “Just Walk Out” technology built for its Amazon Fresh grocery stores.

April 1, 2024: Dell acknowledges 13,000 job cuts

Dell Technologies’ latest 10K filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission disclosed that the company had laid off 13,000 employees over the course of the 2023 fiscal year; it characterized the layoffs and other reorganizational moves as cost-cutting measures. “These actions resulted in a reduction in our overall headcount,” the company said. A comparison to the previous year’s 10K filing, performed by The Register, found that Dell employed 133,000 people at that point, compared to 120,000 as of February 2024. Dell announced layoffs of 6,650 staffers on Feb. 6, but it is unclear whether those cuts were reflected in the numbers from this year’s 10K statement.

See news of earlier layoffs.

Atlassian will reduce its global workforce by approximately 10%, eliminating around 1,600 roles, as the collaboration software maker redirects capital toward artificial intelligence development and enterprise sales.

Co-CEO and co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes disclosed the cuts in a blog post. The decision, he said, was made to “self-fund further investment in AI and enterprise sales” while accelerating the company’s path to sustained profitability.

The announcement came despite a strong recent performance. Atlassian reported cloud revenue of roughly $1.067 billion, up 26% year on year, and remaining performance obligations of approximately $3.814 billion, up 44%. Its Rovo AI assistant surpassed five million monthly active users, and the company now counts more than 600 customers generating over $1 million in annual recurring revenue, the blog post added.

Cannon-Brookes acknowledged that AI was reshaping the skill mix required. “It would be disingenuous to pretend AI doesn’t change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles required in certain areas,” he wrote.

Reading the fine print

Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst and CEO at Greyhound Research, said enterprise buyers should read the move as a strategic reallocation of capital, not a distress signal.

“Management is treating AI not as a side project or a shiny feature layer, but as something that changes how the company should be staffed, what types of roles it needs, and where it should spend its money,” he said.

But he cautioned that financial strength did not confer operational immunity. “Customers do not feel it on day one in the earnings statement,” Gogia said. “They feel it later in slower escalations, fuzzier accountability, longer roadmap cycles, and support journeys that suddenly feel more automated and less informed.”

He also flagged that the cuts were unfolding alongside a broader platform transition, with Atlassian simultaneously pushing customers toward cloud delivery and embedding AI more deeply across Jira, Confluence, and service workflows. “When vendor operating model change and platform model change happen together, CIOs need to pay attention,” Gogia said. “One moving part is manageable. Two moving parts at once can get messy.”

Impacted employees will receive a minimum 16-week separation package globally, with one additional week per year of service, a prorated FY26 bonus, a $1,000 technology payment, and six months of extended healthcare coverage. Atlassian also disclosed a CTO transition, with Rajeev Rajan stepping down and other leaders elevated around next-generation AI priorities.

It is the second significant workforce reduction at Atlassian in three years. In March 2023, the company laid off approximately 500 employees, or 5% of its workforce, framing the move as a rebalancing toward cloud migration and IT service management.

A widening pattern

Atlassian’s announcement is the latest in a fast-growing list of enterprise technology companies citing AI as a structural driver of workforce reductions.

Earlier this month, fintech platform Block cut approximately 4,000 jobs as CEO Jack Dorsey declared a move to an “intelligence-native” operating model. Similarly, Australian logistics software firm WiseTech Global had announced to eliminate around 2,000 roles, with its CEO stating the era of manually writing code was over. Tech layoffs in 2026 had already surpassed 45,000 globally by early March, according to RationalFX, with AI and automation among the most frequently cited drivers.

Gogia said the pattern reflected a shift in boardroom incentives, not just technology. “Once boards and management teams see that investors reward a story built around AI, smaller teams, and future efficiency, the incentive structure shifts quickly,” he said.

CIOs should expect more vendor reorganisations framed around AI productivity, more support interactions routed through AI-mediated channels, and more pricing experimentation blending subscriptions with usage-based mechanisms tied to AI consumption, a direction Atlassian’s Rovo Dev pricing already signalled, Gogia said.

His advice to enterprise buyers was pointed. “CIOs should stop treating vendor AI announcements as purely product announcements. They are operating model announcements, too,” he said. “The right follow-up question is not only ‘what new features do I get?’ It is also ‘what changes behind the curtain in support, staffing, escalation, and accountability?”

Quick: When was the last time you thought about the keyboard app on your phone?

If you’re like most people, the answer is probably somewhere between “a ridiculously long time ago” and “never.” And it’s no wonder: Keyboard apps are easy to forget! You install one — or stick with whatever came loaded on your phone by default — and then use it to input text when you need to. It’s just there, and unless you’re a weirdo who spends hours trying out different keyboards to see how they compare (and then trying ’em all out again months later to see how they’ve evolved and what other options have come along), you’re never gonna know what you’re missing.

Well, good news, my friend: I am that weirdo. Somehow, it’s my job. (Crazy, right?) And I’ve just finished assessing all of the significant Android keyboard apps in their current incarnations to see what they have to offer in 2026 and how they stack up.

Lemme tell ya: These once-unassuming typing tools have come a long way. The top Android keyboard apps now offer almost absurdly polished and refined text input experiences — and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Android keyboards today are overflowing with all sorts of advanced functions that go way beyond their original purposes. And that means it’s more important than ever to find the right setup for your personal productivity needs.

So let’s get into it, shall we? These are the best Android keyboard apps around, broken down by where they excel and for whom they make the most sense.

The best all-around Android keyboard app for most people

Gboard – the Google Keyboard (free)

If you just want a solid, thoughtfully designed keyboard that works well and is pleasant to use, Google’s own Gboard is tough to beat. Gboard is great for accurate swipe-based typing — where you slide your finger from one letter to the next without lifting it — and it does a decent job at tap-oriented typing, too, with its built-in typo correction and next-word prediction capabilities.

Beyond the basics, Gboard supports a variety of potentially useful advanced productivity features. For instance, you can take a photo of a physical paper or whiteboard from right within the keyboard and then insert its words directly into any active text field on your screen. You can also activate an integrated Google Translate mode that’ll translate anything you type from one language to another on the fly.

Other noteworthy elements include a handwriting mode, which transforms your on-screen scribbles into regular text as you write; a floating keyboard layout, which makes it easier to access the keyboard on a large-screened device; a built-in clipboard, which makes it quick ‘n’ simple to find and paste any recently copied content or permanently pinned items; a text selection tool that lets you use arrow keys to move your cursor around to any specific spot on your screen; and a series of other advanced options and hidden shortcuts for extra-speedy text input.

Whether you take advantage of all those possibilities or not, though, Gboard is a well-rounded keyboard that lets you type quickly, accurately, and with minimal hassle on your Android phone. If you don’t have any special requirements and just want a commendable all-around keyboard that gets the job done, Gboard is the app for you.

The best Android keyboard app for simple Windows syncing

Microsoft SwiftKey AI Keyboard (free)

If you’re using Android alongside a Windows computer and like the idea of seamless text sharing across your devices, the now-Microsoft-owned SwiftKey is the Android keyboard app you want. The reason why is simple: SwiftKey and SwiftKey alone offers the ability to sync your Android and Windows clipboards — meaning you can copy something on one device and then instantly paste it on the other, without any extra effort or actions. All it requires is an easy one-time setup to get going.

That alone is a pretty compelling perk, but SwiftKey is also no slouch when it comes to regular on-screen Android typing — especially with its exceptional next-word prediction engine, which is something that’s been one of the keyboard’s greatest strengths since back before Microsoft owned it.

SwiftKey has plenty of other bells and whistles, too, including many of the same mode and input options as Gboard, along with an all-in-one “multi-modal” setting that lets you dictate text while still being able to actively use your on-screen keyboard for manual typing. Some of its more interesting options from the past have been phased out over time, unfortunately, while plenty of eye-roll-inducing elements — like integrated shortcuts for Bing Search and Copilot along with some Microsoft Rewards madness — have made their way into the keyboard.

The keyboard also, not surprisingly, relies mostly on Microsoft services over Google services by default for things like search and translation — which may be a positive, a negative, or a neutral, depending on your perspective.

Provided you’re willing to overlook all the crud Microsoft’s cramming into the keyboard nowadays, though, it’s actually a quite polished and viable alternative to Gboard — if a touch less impressive as an overall package — and its Windows clipboard syncing is a genuinely compelling and completely unique feature. If that holds a lot of appeal for you or you’re just heavily invested in the Microsoft ecosystem and want your Android experience to revolve around that universe, it’s well worth giving a whirl.

The best Android keyboard app for writing perfection

Grammarly AI Writing Assistant (free with optional $140-a-year subscription for premium features)

Our next Android keyboard app isn’t actually a keyboard in and of itself but rather a companion app that you’d use alongside another Android keyboard — like the two we just went over.

Grammarly, as its name suggests, is focused on watching your words and making intelligent suggestions about your grammar, spelling, and other potential issues as you enter text on your phone. And while it originally came in the form of a full-fledged Android keyboard, it’s now an extra layer that appears above whatever primary keyboard you prefer.

That implementation is actually quite thoughtful and clever, too, as it lets you enjoy the ever-evolving features and capabilities of a standout Android keyboard like Gboard or SwiftKey while also benefitting from Grammarly’s exceptional on-the-fly editing prowess. Those suggestions appear via a floating “G” bubble (for, y’know, Grammarly) that hovers just above your keyboard’s upper-left corner. Notably but not obviously, that bubble can be repositioned as you see fit if you press and hold your finger onto it and then drag it anywhere else on the screen.

Then, as you’re typing — in any app, anywhere on your device — Grammarly pops up corrections and suggestions alongside that bubble, which you can opt to accept or ignore. Even when it comes to something as simple as a misspelled word, it outshines other keyboards by making sure an error catches your attention both while you’re actively typing and after you’ve moved past the problematic text, thanks to its lingering presence in that easily visible bubble. And it does the same with grammatical issues, too — something most other keyboards attempt only if and when you actively seek out the feature.

There is, inevitably, an AI element now as well, wherein you can provide specific prompts for how you want Grammarly to rewrite your words — making something shorter, more descriptive, more professional, and so on. And that’s fine. But it’s also something that most other keyboards and writing surfaces in general also now offer, whether you want it or not.

Where Grammarly shines is in the basic ongoing guidance it gives you alongside your existing Android keyboard adventure. And that piece of the puzzle is also free to use, though there is an optional $140-a-year premium subscription that adds in more elaborate rewriting options along with a similar set of benefits across Grammarly’s desktop browser extensions and app-specific integrations.

The best Android keyboard app for voice typing

Wispr Flow (free — for now)

No matter what Android keyboard you’re using, the recently released Wispr Flow Android app will bring a phenomenally powerful upgrade to your Android voice typing experience.

With Wispr Flow installed, anytime your keyboard is active, you’ll see a small floating-bubble icon directly above its keys. All you do is tap it and start talking — or hold it down, if you’d rather — and the app will intelligently interpret whatever you’re saying, eliminate any errors or redundancies, and put your words into neatly formatted text.

It does this at a level that no regular Android keyboard even comes close to matching — with instant and near-flawless transcription, automatic formatting and punctuation, and the ability to both eliminate inadvertent interjections and interpret and process deliberate corrections spoken as you go.

[ Related Q&A: Wispr CEO: What a post-keyboard office might look like ]

Wispr Flow stays open and active for as long as you’re talking, too — even with long, extended pauses — and, true to its name, it works work well even with whispered input for more sensitive (or maybe just courteous) public dictation, which is an area where most traditional voice input systems struggle. It also supports multilingual input and will automatically detect a change in your language and continue to transcribe flawlessly even as you switch dialects.

Wispr Flow is completely free to use on Android for now, as a part of its launch. At some point, it’ll shift into the standard Wispr Flow model, which allows up to 1,000 dictated words per week for free or unlimited use with a $144-a-year Pro plan that stretches across multiple platforms and device types and also includes multi-user team collaboration features.

The best Android keyboard app for privacy and simplicity

Simple Keyboard (free)

On the flip side to the more elaborate Android keyboard options is the bare-bones, basic-as-can-be Simple Keyboard — an app whose name tells you much of what you need to know about the experience it provides.

Simple Keyboard gives you, yes, a simple keyboard, with support for tap-based typing — and that’s pretty much it. There’s no text correction system, no next-word prediction, and no support for swipe-oriented input. There’s not even access to any sort of voice-to-text system, which every other app in this list provides. Heck, aside from a humble set of simple options, Simple Keyboard has no bells and whistles whatsoever. It is, quite simply, a keyboard. And that’s all it aspires to be.

So why would you want such a frills-free typing experience when so many rich, feature-laden alternatives exist? Well, you might not want any of those added elements, for one, and might be content to have something that just lets you tap in words as needed. But perhaps more prominently, Simple Keyboard’s lack of lofty ambitions gives it one powerful feature no other keyboard can match: privacy — built in at its core, with a ground-level assurance that nothing you type could ever be transmitted off your device by the keyboard itself.

Pretty much every other Android keyboard app, y’see, requires perpetual network access in order to operate. And while most of the major players say they’ll never do anything nefarious with your data, there’s no denying that they do at the very least have the ability to observe and transmit it. (The need for internet access can be explained in a variety of perfectly legitimate ways, including the ambitious options those apps have for performing internet searches and even just learning your typing habits over time in order to provide better predictions — but still, if maximum privacy is a top concern of yours, that may not be enough to make it acceptable.)

Simple Keyboard, in contrast, requests no level of network access. In fact, the app doesn’t request any permissions or special forms of access at all. That means there’s no realistic way the app can log what you’re typing and then transfer that data off of your device — for any reason. The program’s code is even completely open source, if you’re tech-savvy and want to confirm exactly what it’s doing.

Most people will prefer the added creature comforts offered by the other apps in this list, but for the privacy-conscious and simplicity-seeking among us, Simple Keyboard is a valuable and unusual contender that plays an important role in this keyboard collection.

This article was originally published in March 2019 and most recently updated in March 2026.

Fresh from battling the US Department of Defense (DoD) over AI guardrails, Anthropic has returned this week with a new initiative: the company is founding a think tank, the Anthropic Institute, “to confront the most significant challenges that powerful AI will pose to our societies.”

Headed by Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark, who will take up a new role as head of public benefit, the Institute’s faculty will be completed by “an interdisciplinary staff of machine learning engineers, economists, and social scientists,” the company said.

It will unite and expand three internal teams: the Frontier Red Team, which stress tests and assesses AI models; Societal Impacts, which models how AI is being used in the real world; and Economic Research, which studies AI’s growing impact on economics and employment.

“The Institute has a unique vantage point: it has access to information that only the builders of frontier AI systems possess. It will use this to its full advantage, reporting candidly about what we’re learning about the shape of the technology we’re making,” Anthropic said.

More unexpectedly for an AI company, it also said, “[the Institute] will engage with workers and industries facing displacement, and with the people and communities who feel the future bearing down on them but are unsure how to respond.”

‘Supply chain risk’

While the timing is probably coincidental, the fact that the Institute is being launched this week comes at the perfect moment to remind the world that Anthropic sees itself as different to its rivals when it comes to AI ethics.

The Anthropic Institute is only the latest in a series of recent announcements, including the Claude Constitution, illustrating the company’s efforts to give outsiders a chance to peer into the design principles informing the model’s values and behavior.

In 2024, CEO Dario Amodei set out his vision of “how AI could transform the world for the better” in an essay reflecting the sort of idealism which has been tested in recent weeks.

On February 27, after weeks of cajoling and threats by the DoD, the company’s refusal to back down on AI ethics saw it banned from Pentagon programs by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as a “supply chain risk.” In response, on Monday an unbowed Anthropic announced a lawsuit asking for a temporary restraining order against the Pentagon.

The question is what enterprise customers should make of what increasingly looks like an irreconcilably ideological clash of cultures.

According to Andrew Gamino-Cheong, CTO of AI governance platform Trustible, the fact that Microsoft has publicly opposed the blanket ban on Anthropic could be significant.

“Microsoft’s support of Anthropic in this will matter,” he said. Slapping “supply chain risk” on a company of Anthropic’s size was also off-putting for the entire sector.

Microsoft, of course, invested $5 million in Anthropic in November, and said it will use Claude Sonnet in its Copilot chatbot, so what happens to Anthropic matters beyond its own walls.

“Many startups and AI companies are going to hesitate to do business with the federal government as a result of this,” Gamino-Cheong noted. “Chinese models haven’t been labelled a ‘supply chain risk’ yet, so it’s wild for an American model creator.”

However, he believed that Anthropic’s focus on AI ethics might appeal to private sector companies for whom AI governance is becoming an important issue.

“Claude’s models have started to pull away and clearly beat most others for many ‘business’ type tasks. This is because of their investment in AI safety research, which is the DoD’s sticking point.”         

This article originally appeared on CIO.com.

If I happened to be one of Apple’s newly-introduced M5 MacBook Pro systems, I would feel a bit as if the equally new MacBook Neo had just strutted into the party like the star of the song.

Yes, the incredibly disruptive Neo is a strong option for almost anyone who needs an affordable general purpose computer. But let’s not forget what Apple’s higher-end range brings to the (party) table with the power and performance high-end users need for the most demanding tasks. 

What’s the data?

In essence, the power they contain means you can use a MacBook Pro to build 3D models almost as easily as you use a Neo to make a spreadsheet. Geekbench proves my point. (I’ve included the M1 chip as a comparison.) Look at these Geekbench scores and you’ll see what I mean:

• M1 Mac: 2,386 single-core; 8,571 multi-core.
• MacBook Neo: 3,467 single-core; 8,668 multi-core.
• M5 Mac: 4,227 single-core; 17,802 multi-core.
• M5 Pro Mac: 4,280 single-core; 28,030 multi-core.
• M5 Max Mac: 4,268 single-core; 29,159 multi-core.

The data shows, that for the toughest multi-core tasks, Apple has more than tripled computational performance in just five years. It is also relevant to note Apple’s statement that the M5 Pro/Mac systems deliver over six times the peak AI compute we got from the original M1 systems.

That’s faster progress than Moore’s Law, which says computational performance should double every 18-24 months, and that trajectory shows how quickly Apple’s Macs have become highly competitive at the highest reaches of the PC industry. Gone are the thermal throttling limitations that plagued Intel Macs during high-end tasks, in comes the capacity to use Apple’s computers when sustained performance is required.

Macs were always good, which is why millions made use of them, But the introduction of Apple Silicon improved them with a degree of hardware excellence they had lacked.

This is formula one

Together, this meant that the performance of an entry-level MacBook Air was better than an Intel-based MacBook Pro, while — like the F1-series vehicles currently turning Apple executives eyes — MacBook Pro performance, including in the new M5 Pro/Max systems, sped ahead on the autobahn. 

The truth is that performance on both pro and the entry-level Macs has accelerated to the point that it has created a big gap at the low end, which MacBook Neo and its iPhone chip can easily fill. That means Apple’s traditional two-part Pro/Consumer product matrix has been transformed into Good, Better, and Best options. 

Furthermore, Apple’s silicon development seems to be accelerating so swiftly it is creating space for an all-new ‘Ultra’ tier for the most demanding users, recent reports claim. 

As a result, the number of people Apple can offer a Mac to is growing as rapidly as the product matrix. Future Ultra Macs will take that reach all the way up to the very, very top tiers currently served by furiously expensive PC workstations, while the Neo range (which I’m willing to bet gets a backlit keyboard and more memory next year) extends its hand all the way to students and general purpose computer users.

General purpose doesn’t mean average

Don’t neglect that — despite being an entry-level, $599 system — the MacBook Neo is faster for general purpose (single-core) tasks than the M3 Macs Apple introduced in October 2023. Here are the Geekbench numbers:

• MacBook Neo: 3,467 single-core, 8,668 multi-core.
• M3 Mac: 3,135 single-core, 12,042 multi-core.

The M3 retains the edge for complex tasks, of course, and it will always be true that if your work involves anything more than casual video or image editing, you should aim for a more advanced Mac than a Neo.

The thing is by pointing out just how powerful the iPhone chip inside a MacBook Neo has become in Mac performance terms, I’m also attempting to illustrate the phenomenal advances Apple has made at the high-end of its range. If you want to surf the web and write emails you’ll get a Neo; if you need to research and develop AI models, or run any kind of workloads that demand maximum GPU compute and high unified memory bandwidth, the M5 Max MacBook Pro can deliver.

Apple is becoming cheap

Another slice of context: 

A TrendForce report earlier this week tells us to expect steep (40%) price increases for PC notebooks as manufacturers grapple with dramatic cost spikes for memory and CPUs. This is a much bigger problem for Windows OEMs than for Apple, in part because Apple controls manufacturing of its own processors. That makes them cheaper to obtain, and while the company is putting more memory in some Macs, it can still deliver these high performance experiences with less RAM than an equivalent PC would require.

Apple has always worked to get more from less memory. But as the AI evolution causes memory prices to spike, that lean approach leaves the Mac maker more resistant to component-driven price increases than competitors. 

Never been a better time to offer up Mac

In short, Macs no longer seem so expensive, and for IT purchasers it suggests that there has never been a better time to introduce Macs to your employee tech preference schemes. And, of course, with Apple Silicon, the future should look even better tomorrow.

Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe. Also, now on Mastodon.

Google on Wednesday introduced several new ways for Gemini AI assistant to create and edit content in Workspace apps such as Docs, Slides and Sheets. 

The changes, said Julie Geller, principal research director at Info-Tech Research Group, represent “incremental improvements more than revolutionary features, but they address real workflow gaps. The actual value is that Google is embedding AI assistance directly into the tools people use every day, like Docs, Sheets, and Slides.”

With the “help me create” feature in Docs, Gemini creates a draft based on user instructions, pulling together information from other Workspace files such as documents, chat messages, and emails. It’s accessed via a side panel or the new prompt bar at the bottom of a document. Once a draft is created, Gemini can then make edits to specific sections of text within the document.

Gemini can also match the writing style across a document, which can be particularly useful when multiple coworkers create a document. A “match doc” feature is used to add information to an existing template.

For many office workers, the biggest hurdle to starting a project is manual prep work and “digging through emails to get a first draft on the page,” Yulie Kwon Kim, Google vice president of product for Google Workspace, said in a briefing. “Now, Gemini handles that for you, drawing on information across your Drive, your Gmail, your Chat, to deliver personalized outputs based on your specific context. Once you have a draft you can then co-edit with Gemini live in the document.”

For Sheets, Gemini can take turn raw data in a spreadsheet with raw data into a dashboard with visualizations using natural language prompts. Gemini sets out a series of steps for user approval and asks clarifying questions if needed as it carries out a task. 

Gemini and Sheets are “moving from a tool you work in, to a collaborative partner,” said Kim. “With a single prompt, Gemini pulls relevant data from across your Gmail, Chat, Drive, to create a formatted spreadsheet in seconds,”

Gemini lets users describe what they want in plain English, without needing to know complex formulas. Additionally, a “fill with Gemini” function in Sheets lets users quickly populate cells with relevant information. 

Google cited a company research document as an example. Gemini can determine from the column headers what information is required — HQ location, revenue, and market cap, for instance —and then search the web to generate the information.

While the tool could potentially save office workers time, hallucinations are always a concern with generative AI (genAI), particularly when working with important business data. Google claims Gemini in Google Sheets has achieved a near-human level of accuracy in benchmark tests, and users are given source links to check the data themselves. 

“Accuracy is a top challenge for genAI, and user trust is the ‘final boss,’” said Amy Machado, senior research manager at IDC. “Regardless of the vendor, even the most sophisticated tools will fail to achieve meaningful adoption without it.”  

With that in mind, Google is prioritizing the “context stack,” she said, with a focus on “optimizing document AI, RAG architectures, and vector embeddings that power these new features.

“The goal is high-precision, grounded retrieval and outcomes that earn user confidence,” said Machado.

Gemini in Drive and Slides

There are also updates to Google’s Drive storage. In response to user search queries in Drive, AI Overviews provides a list of relevant files alongside a short summary of their contents. For more in-depth questions, it’s possible to create custom file repositories based on specific files and folders, or even Workspace apps, with Ask Gemini in Drive. 

The Gemini features in Google Drive are the “sleeper story” of the updates this week, said Mike Leone, practice director, data, analytics & AI, at Omdia. “Turning Drive from passive file storage into something closer to an active knowledge-base could change how people think about their own information,” he said.

“I’ve been watching every major platform try to solve the ‘I know this is somewhere in my files’ problem, and Google’s approach of layering AI Overviews on top of Drive search feels like the most natural implementation I’ve seen.”

In Slides, users can edit individual slides with natural language prompts to Gemini, adapting existing design components and text as directed. It’s possible to generate a new slide that matches the same design and formatting across the rest of the deck.

In the future, Google said it will be possible to generate a full presentation from scratch based on Workspace documents.

All of the features roll out this week in beta, and will be available to AI Ultra and Pro subscribers, and Workspace customers in the Gemini Alpha program.

The features streamline processes and could save time on repetitive tasks, said Geller.  “Instead of switching between applications or starting from scratch, employees get support for drafting, organizing data, and summarizing information built right in.”

But she noted “friction points” that could undermine any time-savings. “Ask Gemini function can generate verbose responses without consolidation, leaving you with repetitive content to clean up manually,” said Geller. “And basic things like pasting screenshots for context don’t work the same way as on other platforms, which limits how useful the AI can actually be.”

Leone called the individual features “solid but not groundbreaking, since AI-assisted writing and slide generation have been around for a while now. What’s actually interesting is how Gemini now pulls from Gmail, Drive, Chat and Calendar to build a first draft or assemble a spreadsheet.

“Right-sized context is king right now in enterprise AI, and Google has a natural advantage because so much of a person’s work context already lives inside the Workspace ecosystem,” he said. “I’d expect strong business demand around Sheets and Drive specifically.”

Competing with Microsoft 365 Copilot

Google’s Gemini announcements follow close on the heels of updates to Microsoft 365 Copilot unveiled Monday, including its Copilot Cowork AI agent.

“When it comes to document applications and content creation, Google’s announcements are on par with what Microsoft offers,” said Machado. “Where Microsoft appears to be differentiating is in driving more multi-model and cross-application, integrated agentic experiences.”

Rather than competing directly with Microsoft 365 Copilot, Google is taking a different approach, said Geller. “Google isn’t playing catch up here because they’re moving on a different track,” she said. 

Microsoft is focused on user-facing workflow automation, said Geller, while Google is “offering both lightweight assistants in Workspace and developer tools for building agents. 

“They’re not directly competing yet,” she said. “If these features work reliably and save time, they deepen your investment in the ecosystem, which is exactly what both Google and Microsoft are counting on. 

“Both are iterating quickly, but speed alone won’t determine the winner. The real differentiator will be the way the customer feedback loops are designed, not just shipping features.”

While Microsoft described Copilot as an “agent” in its Wave 3 launch, Google steered clear of the term in relation to Gemini for Workspace. “They frame Gemini as a ‘collaborative partner,’ which tells you where this sits on the AI maturity curve,” said Leone.

“From my recent conversations with Google’s Workspace and Gemini teams, I know their broader agentic vision is much more ambitious, so stay tuned for that. Google has arguably the strongest foundation AI model and agent development frameworks in the market right now, and today’s features show how well Gemini can connect context across the Workspace ecosystem.

“But Microsoft is setting the pace for agentic in the workplace, and that’s the gap Google needs to close.”

For as long as most junior coders have been alive, tech vendors have talked up performance guarantees even though they neglect to detail just what happens if they don’t deliver as promised. 

I have been begging vendors to knock off these deceptions for a long time — a very long time. 

Last week, I briefly celebrated when storage vendor Scality announced a guarantee and backed it up with a promised payment of $100,000 if it failed. So far, so good.

In its announcement, the company boasted that the guarantee did not come with a lengthy list of limitations. “Unlike complex vendor programs that advertise larger amounts but are difficult to claim,” the vendor said, “Scality’s guarantee is designed to be clear, accessible.” 

It argued that the guarantee was “simple” and came with “straightforward eligibility” requirements and company execs made a lot of noise about what they were doing.

In an interview, Scality CMO Paul Speciale elaborated, dismissing other companies that deliver a “long list of stipulations and terms” and an “onerous list of conditions.”

In a statement, Scality CEO Jérôme Lecat said, “With this cyber guarantee, we’re putting our money where our architecture is. It’s a simple, direct promise that reflects the confidence we have.”

Given that we journalists are a cynical and suspicious lot, that sounded awfully close to overcompensation, so I took a look into the company’s end-user license agreement (EULA). More on that in a moment — but let’s just say my suspicions turned out to be warranted. 

Read the EULA

The lesson here for IT? Always read every word in the EULA and other documents before signing any deals. 

Let’s start with the guarantee, which relates to customers using its Artesca storage line: “A $100,000 financial guarantee to customers if an external cyberattack destroys or encrypts data stored immutably on Artesca. The program applies to every Artesca customer without requiring the purchase of additional services. As long as organizations keep Artesca up to date and protect data using Object Lock in compliance mode, they qualify for the guarantee.” 

Forget the limitations, even the initial offer has limts. The cyberattack must be external — somehow exempting insider attacks from this guarantee — and the attack must destroy or encrypt data. If an attacker simply exfiltrates data or even just accesses it without authorization, the customer gets no money. (This Willy Wonka clip strikes the right note.)

By the way, the absence of exfiltration was no oversight. As Speciale said, “Even with stolen or leaked credentials, we can prevent data stored immutably from being deleted or encrypted. But anyone with proper access credentials can read and therefore exfiltrate data. A deletion/encryption can be audited whereas a data exfiltration cannot be audited.”

He also said his company has mechanisms in place to make it less likely for an attack on the vendor to expose customer data. “First, our support team does not have the customers’ Artesca access credentials,” Speciale said. “Next, even if we would, our product implements MFA, so it would not be enough that the credentials are stolen. The device enabling the real-time second factor authentication needs to also be under control of the attacker, a much rarer occurrence. This would require more active participation of the person attacked by the social engineering, but again we don’t even have the access credentials for the customers’ system to begin with.”

What other limits are in the fine print? “Customers must notify Scality within 48 hours of discovering a qualifying incident and cooperate in root cause analysis, including providing relevant logs and telemetry.”

Oh, really? A customer that’s just been hit with a cyberattack is going to be insanely busy those first two days. Customers could easily blow by that deadline — if they’re even aware of it — before even thinking of applying for the money.

Speciale said the 48-hour time frame is only for an initial heads up. Why theshort window? “If a customer waits weeks or months to report the incident, critical system logs may be overwritten, and evidence of how the breach occurred will be lost, making it impossible to verify if the software failed or if the customer made a configuration error.” So Scality wants to see those logs to decide for itself whether the incident qualifies. 

The dilution of the guarantee deepens elsewhere. The news release said the guarantee “applies to every Artesca customer without requiring the purchase of additional services.” Not exactly,  given that it excludes free license customers.

The documents also limit that ethereal $100,000 to customers “with a minimum of 50TB license.” That’s  not an especially onerous requirement, but it does undermine the “applies to every Artesca customer” claim.

There is also a strange exemption that kicks in if an attacker does anything beyond deleting or encrypting data; the EULA says that encryption or deletion must be “the direct and sole consequence” of the attack.

How much is enough?

Scality also includes this interesting line in its news release: “Many Artesca customers protect 50TB or more, while investing only a few thousand dollars per year in software. For those customers, a $100,000 payout represents a multiple of their annual investment, thereby delivering very strong proportional assurance.”

But when a breach occurs that is the vendor’s fault, the issue is how much did that mistake cost the customers. If a customer loses $15 million, the company CFO is not going to say, “That’s OK because we only spent $10,000 on the product.” That company is going to want full compensation.

It makes me wonder: Is this guarantee a cute way of sidestepping a civil court verdict that could easily cost far more? The EULA says: “Licensee acknowledges and agrees that the Guarantee Payment shall constitute the sole and exclusive remedy for any Qualifying Cyber Incident, and no other damages, including, but not limited to, direct, indirect, incidental, or consequential damages, shall be available to the Licensee.”

Asked about this, Speciale said that other paperwork signed by the customers already blocked alternative legal mechanisms, whether by civil lawsuit or arbitration. 

“The guarantee is actually an enhancement, since without the Cyber Guarantee, standard commercial terms from most storage vendors, including Scality, disclaim liability for loss of data or a security breach. Our standard liability is also capped at the amount paid by the customer.” 

In other words, if customers don’t read the initial documentation carefully and sign it, they’ve already have surrendered their right to be made whole.

Maybe loudly touting a guarantee that comes with with an extensive list of exemptions is slightly better than offering no guarantee at all. But the underlying lesson remains: caveat emptor has never been more apt.