You can finally turn the Copilot key back into the key it replaced

Look at the bottom right of your keyboard. If the laptop is newer than about two years old, there is a decent chance the Copilot key is sitting where the right-hand Ctrl key or the little menu key used to be. Microsoft is finally offering to put it back.

The setting turned up in Release Preview builds 26100.9539 and 26200.9539 on 10 September. The release notes put it plainly: the update "lets you remap the Copilot key to function as the Right Ctrl or Context Menu key, helping preserve familiar keyboard shortcuts and accessibility workflows." You will find it under Settings, then Bluetooth and devices, then Keyboard, with three options to pick from: Copilot, Right Ctrl or Context Menu.

That accessibility line is doing real work. Right Ctrl is not a spare key for people who use screen readers, a lot of which were built around it. The Context Menu key is how you open a right-click menu without a mouse, which for some people with limited hand movement is the only practical way to get around Windows at all. When laptop makers started swapping those two keys for a button that opens a chatbot, they quietly broke habits and setups that had been stable since the nineties.

The catch is the usual one. Release Preview means Insiders have it and nobody else does. Microsoft says the setting arrives for everyone in October's mandatory update, and earlier for anyone who installs this month's optional preview. If your PC is one of the ones where Windows Update has quietly stopped delivering anything at all, Tendvane's Windows Update repair wizard is the quickest way to find that out before October comes round.