Yesterday, Windows 365 Switch hit the public preview stage via the Beta and Dev Channels. The 2nd of the “Big 3” for Windows 365 in Windows 365 Boot, Windows 365 Switch, and Windows 365 Beachmode (Offline Mode). Another great advancement on the Cloud PC platform, which we will discuss today. I will show you how to get started and a short demo on the user experience.
Meeting the Requirements for Windows 365 Switch
Our requirements are pretty simple. We must be on:
- Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22631.2191+ (The docs say 2050, but that wasn’t my experience) on both your local PC and Cloud PC
- Update to Windows 365 App version 1.3.179.0+
One option you have is leveraging Microsoft Intune to move your PC to Beta/Dev Channels, which you can check out from my previous video below:
Feel free to check out my video to how to upgrade your PC and Cloud PC to the Preview Builds needed to use Windows 365 Switch (you would still do this after deploying via Intune or without):
A helpful hint is to make sure you don’t have anything in your Update Profiles that defers Feature Updates, because that will stop you from finding 2191 (learned that from experience).
If you aren’t using Intune and you want to install/update Windows 365 via Winget, you can do this (most people won’t need to, but I like sharing it):
winget install --name 'Windows 365'An interesting thing about it is Winget doesn’t see the version of Windows 365, but something I was playing around with when I was trying to find the new version (which hadn’t hit yet).
Keep in mind, it will take a few hours (potentially up to 8h) before your Windows 365 app will pickup on your Windows build and allow you to proceed to “officially flipping it on.”
For 100% clarity, the gateway to enabling things is clicking on “Add to Task view” inside the app. That shows that your machine is ready for Windows 365 Switch. Now, let’s move onto the setup and user experience demo.
Windows 365 Switch Demo
Now, you’re ready to Windows 365 Switch it up! The demo below will show you just how easy it is and the nice job they did with the user experience around it. Task view is still a new feature that many people aren’t using yet, and I hope this will make people realize how cool it is.
Thoughts on Windows 365 Switch
I have similar thoughts to Boot in that they do make it a bit hard to get out of it (if you don’t know what you’re doing). I think that’s probably fine, but might be a helpdesk call creator. The user experience in general is stellar. Big props to likely Jen Gentleman and others at Microsoft who decided to make the shortcut for Task view as Windows Button + Tab which is so obvious and amazing.
In the video, you saw that throughout we got nice visual cues and expected experiences. I think that is simplicity at its finest and I hope this capability will hit GA quickly as it’s a good Quality of Life improvement for Windows 365.
