Microsoft has temporarily halted automatic installation of the Microsoft 365 Copilot app on Windows devices with Microsoft 365 desktop apps. The company announced the change via an update in Microsoft 365 Message Centre, but offered no indication when the measure would be reactivated.  However, existing installations of the app will not be affected. “Automatic installation of the Microsoft 365 Copilot app on Windows devices with Microsoft 365 desktop apps, planned for December 2025, is temporarily disabled,” it said, according to a copy of the March 16 update archived on a third-party mirror . It was only last year that Microsoft announced that it would push the new AI app onto devices. It said the app would provide a centralized entry point for accessing Copilot experiences and AI-powered capabilities across Microsoft 365. It is not clear why Microsoft has taken this action, but one possibility is that it is tied to a repositioning of the product. CEO Satya Nadella said this week that to move forward on AI, the company will bring commercial and consumer Copilot systems together as one unified effort spanning four connected pillars: Copilot experience, Copilot platform, Microsoft 365 apps, and AI models. Microsoft has been pushing Copilot extensively to its users. I t has already implemented several initiatives to show that the software can compete with other AI tools in the enterprise space. It is only the automatic installation of the app that has been suspended. Sysadmins will be able to use other installation methods such as Intune to install the Microsoft 365 Copilot app until this capability is restored. You can use Intune and other software management tools to deploy the app. This s not a global decision by Microsoft: users in the European Economic Area (the European Union plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) will see no change.