Microsoft started rolling out a single Copilot app on August 13, 2026, merging the consumer Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot experiences into one. The part with a deadline attached is the cleanup that comes with it. On Tuesday, August 18, Group Chat, Podcasts and the consumer version of Deep Research are retired, and Group Chat threads, messages and images are permanently deleted rather than migrated. Mobile and web are rolling out globally now, with Windows and macOS following in mid September. If anyone in your organisation keeps something useful in a Copilot group thread, you have until Tuesday to get it out.
The short answer
Microsoft began rolling out a unified Copilot app on August 13, 2026, merging consumer Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot into one client. Mobile and web are going out globally now, Windows and macOS follow in mid September. On August 18, Group Chat is retired and its threads, messages and images are permanently deleted, Podcasts is retired along with existing podcasts and shared links, and consumer Deep Research is replaced by Researcher for Microsoft 365 Premium subscribers. Personal, work and school data stays separated by account type.
Most product consolidations are somebody else's problem until a date appears. This one has a date, it is Tuesday, and it deletes things.
What is merging
On August 13, 2026, Microsoft started rolling out a single Copilot app that replaces the split between the consumer Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot. One client, one experience, with personal, work and school accounts all living inside it.
Mobile and web are going out globally through mid August. Windows and macOS follow in mid September, starting as an opt in rather than a forced migration. Chat history and content carry across, apart from the features being retired.
The data boundary survives the merge. Microsoft says chats, content and data remain separated by account type, Entra work and school accounts stay distinct from personal Microsoft accounts, and enterprise governance controls apply as they did before. Nothing changes about who can see what. What changes is that the separation is now enforced inside one application instead of being obvious from the fact that users had two.
The part with a deadline
On Tuesday, August 18, three things go away.
Group Chat is retired, and this is the one to act on. Threads, messages and shared images are not migrated into the new experience. They are permanently deleted. Anyone who wants to keep a conversation has to copy or download it before Tuesday.
Podcasts is fully retired. You lose the ability to create them, and previously generated podcasts along with any shared links stop working. There is no archive left behind.
Deep Research goes away for consumer users. The capability continues as Researcher, but only for Microsoft 365 Premium subscribers. That is the clearest example of the pattern in this release: features move up the paid tiers or disappear.
Two smaller notes: the animated character Mico moves over to Microsoft Learn Live while ordinary Copilot Voice stays put, and Copilot Health may be temporarily unavailable while the rollout runs. Neither needs action, but both generate tickets if nobody warned the helpdesk.
What administrators should do this week
Start with the deletion, because it is the only irreversible item. Group Chat is exactly the sort of feature people adopt without telling anyone: a few colleagues sharing a thread for an informal project, outside whatever collaboration tool was officially blessed. Those users are usually not reading admin bulletins. A short, direct message saying that Copilot group threads are deleted on Tuesday and here is how to export one will do more good than a change log entry.
Then map the dependencies. Anything scheduled, documented or scripted around Deep Research needs to be re-pointed at Researcher, and Researcher needs a Microsoft 365 Premium licence, so this is a licensing question as well as a technical one. If a recurring report in your team was produced with Deep Research on a free account, it stops being produced this week.
Finally, plan for the staggered rollout rather than a switch date. Mobile and web move now, desktop moves in September, so for a month people will have the new app on their phone and the old one on their laptop. Screenshots in your documentation will be wrong for one platform whichever one you choose, which is an argument for waiting until September to rewrite it.
None of this is dramatic. It is three days of notice on a permanent deletion, which is the sort of thing worth catching before Tuesday rather than after. For the wider commercial backdrop to Copilot licensing, we also covered the UK competition regulator's look at Microsoft 365 Copilot pricing.
Sources and further reading
- Microsoft merges Copilot apps as features disappear starting Aug. 18, TechRepublic, August 14, 2026
- Microsoft begins unified Copilot app rollout, Windows Central, August 2026
- Microsoft starts merging its Copilot consumer and business apps in advance of super app rollout, GeekWire, August 2026
- Frequently asked questions about retiring Copilot features, Microsoft Support
Frequently asked questions
What exactly happens on August 18?
Three features go away. Group Chat is retired and its threads, messages and shared images are permanently deleted rather than carried into the new experience, so anything worth keeping has to be copied out beforehand. Podcasts is fully retired: you can no longer create them, and previously generated podcasts along with any shared links become inaccessible. Deep Research, the tool that produced long sourced reports, is retired for consumer users; the equivalent capability continues as Researcher, available to Microsoft 365 Premium subscribers. Separately, the animated character Mico moves to Microsoft Learn Live, while standard Copilot Voice stays where it is.
Do our tenant settings and compliance controls change?
Microsoft's position is that they do not. Enterprise security, compliance and governance controls continue to apply as before, and Microsoft Entra work and school accounts stay separate from personal Microsoft accounts even though both now live inside the same application shell. Chats, content and data remain separated by account type. The practical caution is the one that applies to every unified client: the boundary is now enforced inside one app rather than by the fact that users had two different icons. That is a user education point more than a technical one, and it is worth a line in whatever change note you send out.
What is the rollout schedule per platform?
Mobile and web began rolling out globally in mid August, starting August 13, 2026. Windows and macOS follow in mid September, beginning as an opt in rather than a forced switch. Existing users keep their chat histories and content through the migration, with the explicit exception of the retiring features. Copilot Health may be temporarily unavailable during the transition, which is worth knowing before someone files a ticket about it. Because the phases are staggered, expect a period where a user's phone shows the new app and their desktop still shows the old one.
Who actually loses something here?
Consumers on the free tier lose the most, since Deep Research moves behind Microsoft 365 Premium. Anyone who used Copilot Podcasts loses the archive entirely, not just the ability to make new ones. Group Chat users lose their history unless they export it, and that group is easy to underestimate: shared threads tend to be used by small teams doing informal collaboration outside the sanctioned tools, so the people affected are often not the ones reading admin bulletins. Paying Microsoft 365 Premium subscribers lose almost nothing, which is broadly the shape of the change.
Is this the Copilot super app people keep mentioning?
Not quite. Reporting distinguishes this consolidation from the broader super app that Microsoft has signalled, treating the current merge as the foundation rather than the destination: one client, one identity model, one place where features are added or removed. The retirements fit that reading. Group Chat, Podcasts and a free tier research tool are all features that made sense in a standalone consumer assistant and make less sense in a single application that has to serve personal, work and school accounts under one roof.