11. New MIDI Services on Windows 11 - 2026 Updates
The new Windows 11 MIDI Services Native MIDI 2.0 support in Windows 11 is arriving through "Windows MIDI Services," rolling out to supported retail releases of Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2 starting in February 2026 and it provides the following options. To check if you have it there is a tool by Microsoft here that checks if the MIDI services are installed.
Make sure the option "Use names compatible with previous versions of the Windows MIDI APIs" is selected.
Update April 2026
a recent Windows 11 update creates issues with MIDI 1.0 virtual ports, so the above solution of enabling loopback ports doesn't work.
https://devblogs.microsoft.
The Window MIDI github repository states the following:
Until these are in the main Windows releases, please use the Service Plugin installers from the rc3 release. The MIDI Settings app will work with those builds.
You can also get the fix from the discord https://aka.ms/
We suggest to uninstall any MIDI related updates from Window as at the time being the seem to be experimental to avoid any disruption of working MIDI ports.