What to do when Copilot is not found on Windows 11?

According to Microsoft, Copilot is the future of Windows. But what if you want to try it but can't find Copilot? The following article will show you some tricks if Copilot doesn't appear on your Windows 11.

Where is Copilot?

If Copilot is installed properly on Windows 11, you should be able to find the icon in the bottom left corner of your screen. Click the button here and the Copilot side panel will appear.

On some versions of Windows, depending on which version you're running, simply hovering over the Copilot icon will launch it. Otherwise, just click the button to get started.

You need a Microsoft account for Copilot

If Copilot is not available on your system, there could be a number of different reasons. However, one of the most common cases is not being able to sign in to your Microsoft account.

For example, if you installed Windows 11 without an Internet connection, you may not be able to sign in to your Microsoft account. Don't worry, switching from a local account to a Microsoft account on Windows 11 is quite easy.

You may have other reasons for not using a Microsoft account with Windows 11, but regardless of your reasons, Copilot won't work without a Microsoft account.

Have you updated Windows?

Copilot can also deploy slowly on your computer if you don't have automatic updates turned on. To resolve this, turn on automatic updates or just check for updates manually.

To check for updates, press the Windows key , then search for “updates” . You should see Check for updates appear in the list. Open this, then click the button labeled Check for updates in the upper right corner of the window.

If there are any updates available, choose to install them. After rebooting, you should hopefully see Copilot in your Windows 11 installation.

You will need a little patience

If you want to try out newer Copilot features right away, you'll need to run an Insider build of Windows 11. These are great for trying out new features, but they increase the chance of instability on your computer.

Assuming you don’t want to sign up for the Windows Insider program, you can just wait until your version of Windows 11 is updated. Microsoft is rolling out Copilot pretty quickly, so hopefully you won’t have to wait too long.

Hopefully you now have Copilot happily running on your system. If you’re not sure where to go from here, check out our guide explaining how to use Copilot on Windows .

Even if you don’t have Copilot installed on Windows 11, that doesn’t mean you’re completely out of luck. At the time of writing, there are several versions of Copilot, running on platforms ranging from Microsoft Edge to the web, so you can at least get a sense of what Copilot is like.