Microsoft has some good news for anybody wanting to get an early look at Windows 11 but don’t want to have to deal with the hassle of using the often unstable Dev Channel build.

Yesterday Microsoft announced that folks could now access a Windows 11 build in the Beta Channel of its Windows Insider Program. While this is not the final build of the operating system, it should be a bit more stable than the Dev Channel releases.

“If you are in the Dev Channel, now would be the right time to consider switching to the Beta Channel if you want to stay on more stabilized builds of Windows 11,” Microsoft wrote in a blog.

We’ve been using Windows 11 for about a week now and we’ve only experienced one major issue where our GPU drivers just stopped working. Thankfully a quick re-installation was all that was needed to fix that issue.

With that having been said we’re keen to switch to the Beta Channel if only to slow down the number of updates we receive. While we’ve only received three since installing Windows 11, coming from Windows 10 where we received updates far less frequently, those updates did tend to happen in the middle of our work day which was less than ideal.

Yes, we are mad enough to be using Windows 11 on our daily driver but we do not recommend you do this unless you know what you’re doing.

We should also point out that the only way to officially get Windows 11 – Dev Channel or Beta Channel – is to go through the Windows Insider Program on your Windows 10 PC. Before you do that though, head to this blog post to read through the list of known issues so that you know what you’re getting yourself into.

To do this, open Settings, head to Update & Security and select Windows Insider Program. If you’ve never registered for Insider you will need to do that before you can select the Channel. Follow the prompts on screen and click submit.

From there select Beta Channel, follow the prompts on screen and then restart your PC when asked. After the restart head back to Update & Security, navigate to Windows Update and then check for updates and Windows 11 Build 22000.100 should start downloading.

Our download took little over an hour but it is wholly dependent on how fast your internet is.

Be sure to give Microsoft feedback when asked to do so or submit feedback via the option in the Windows Update menu on Windows 11.

Overall we’re quite enjoying Windows 11 although to be frank, the only time we realise we’re using a new operating system is when we run into an issue. The user interface is growing on us and we like the new icons. We’re not fans of the new Start menu but as we hardly ever use it, opting to type the name of the app we need, it’s not something that will impact our experience of the operating system.