Enlarge / A rendering of the Copilot button. (credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft is all-in on its Copilot+ PC push right now, but the fact is that they'll be an extremely small minority among the PC install base for the foreseeable future. The program's stringent hardware requirements—16GB of RAM, at least 256GB of storage, and a fast neural processing unit (NPU)—disqualify all but new PCs, keeping features like Recall from running on all current Windows 11 PCs.

But the Copilot chatbot remains supported on all Windows 11 PCs (and most Windows 10 PCs), and a change Microsoft has made to recent Windows 11 Insider Preview builds is actually making the feature less useful and accessible than it is in the current publicly available versions of Windows. Copilot is being changed from a persistent sidebar into an app window that can be resized, minimized, and pinned and unpinned from the taskbar, just like any other app. But at least as of this writing, this version of Copilot can no longer adjust Windows' settings, and it's no longer possible to call it up with the Windows+C keyboard shortcut. Only newer keyboards with the dedicated Copilot key will have an easy built-in keyboard shortcut for summoning Copilot.

If Microsoft keeps these changes intact, they'll hit Windows 11 PCs when the 24H2 update is released to the general public later this year; the changes are already present on Copilot+ PCs, which are running a version of Window 11 24H2 out of the box.

Enlarge / The Recall feature provides a timeline of screenshots and a searchable database of text, thoroughly tracking everything about a person's PC usage. (credit: Microsoft)

On Friday, Microsoft announced major changes to its upcoming Recall feature after overwhelming criticism from security researchers, the press, and its users. Microsoft is turning Recall off by default when users set up PCs that are compatible with the feature, and it's adding additional authentication and encryption that will make it harder to access another user's Recall data on the same PC.

It's likely not a coincidence that Microsoft also quietly pulled the build of the Windows 11 24H2 update that it had been testing in its Release Preview channel for Windows Insiders. It's not unheard of for Microsoft to stop distributing a beta build of Windows after releasing it, but the Release Preview channel is typically the last stop for a Windows update before a wider release.

Microsoft hasn't provided a specific rationale for pulling the update; the blog post says the pause is "temporary" and the rollout will be resumed "in the coming weeks." Windows Insider Senior Program Manager Brandon LeBlanc posted on social media that the team was "working to get it rolling out again shortly."