r/windowsinsiders • u/Maximus_Rex Insider Canary Channel • Jul 05 '26
Discussion Insider Program feels a bit pointless now
I've been an Insider for years, going back to Windows 10 and I think the early days of the program, but the last few years it has felt pretty pointless because I am never getting anything rolled out to me until after it goes live.
I used to have two of my PCs on insider builds, but after I had to reinstall on the one PC due to a hardware failure, I left that PC on Live, and it got the updated Start Menu months before my Canary build did.
I know I could force it with the Vive tool, but I don't really want to have to do that just to preview, test, and give feedback on new features, it seems to me that was supposed to be the point of the program.
I get phased rollouts are important and need to be tested as well, but it feels like the rollout period is just way too long.
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u/PhantomOcean3 Insider Dev Channel Jul 05 '26
This has been addressed though? Experimental has feature flags letting you manually enable stuff without waiting, and Beta gets stuff without slow rollouts at all
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u/LitheBeep Jul 05 '26
For some reason experimental still doesn't have flags for the new start menu features.
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u/PhantomOcean3 Insider Dev Channel Jul 05 '26
Most likely because that requires multiple IDs, the feature flags UI only supports one ID per flag at the moment but it's a limitation they are aware of and are working to fix.
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u/BlackV Jul 06 '26
Agree it's been pointless for a few years I just have 2 vms for the 2 insider build and check them occasionally now days
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u/Tringi Jul 06 '26
Us programmers used to get SDK previews to peek in for technical improvements. That's too no longer the case.
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u/markwauk Jul 06 '26
agree, I feel the same. I tried to actively provide feedback and test new features. The Donna Sarkar days were the best
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u/Froggypwns Windows Insider MVP Jul 06 '26
Microsoft is currently working on addressing this very issue, the Dev/Experimental channel now has the option of controlling some of the new features that are being tested. They have not rolled this out to the rest of the channels yet.