“Only Windows 11 Pro supports local account at initial setup”

A source from PCWorld reports that only the Pro version of Windows 11 supports local accounts during initial setup. However, Home users can switch to a local account after the initial setup is complete.

The source of PCWorld is ‘close to Microsoft’. A local account is simply a user on the Windows machine, who is not logged into the OS with a Microsoft account. A local account will not have a limited user experience compared to an online account, according to the source, although certain Microsoft features that use the cloud will of course not work, such as OneDrive.

Although users can set up their user accounts however they want after the initial setup, Microsoft has already had the chance to collect certain data about the PC by then. For example, it will then at least know that there is a Windows 11 computer, which hardware it is running on and with which Microsoft account the installation took place.

This difference between the Home and Pro versions of the OS was already revealed in the leaked build of Windows 11. However, that was a build that had not been officially released, so these kinds of details may not have been fixed yet. The statements from the PCWorld source indicate that it does.

Microsoft has been taking steps to direct users towards online accounts for some time. For example, in 2019, the option was hidden in the initial setup of Windows 10 Home. At that time, it could only be retrieved by disconnecting the device from the internet, a trick that does not work with the Windows 11 builds. With that build you can skip the screen below with Alt+F4, after which a local account can still be created. It is expected that this workaround will be completed before the OS release, sometime in the first half of 2022.

The initial setup of Home (L) and Pro (R), on the leaked build – via Neowin.net