May 27th, 2025
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What was origin of the code name Redpill for Windows 8 feature lockout?

Raymond Chen

Work on the revamped Windows 8 user interface had begun long before its public announcement in June 2011. The team doing the work needed to keep their efforts under wraps to avoid any leaks or other premature disclosures.

Humphrey: Can you keep a secret?

Bernard: (expectantly) Of course.

Humphrey: So can I.

— Yes, Minister, Season 1, Episode 1, “Open Government”.

The mechanism for hiding the Windows 8 features from anyone not authorized to know about them was known as Redpill (one word, accent on the red).

The name was, as you might suspect, a reference to the scene from the movie The Matrix in which the main character is offered a choice between taking a red pill or a blue pill. The blue pill returns him to his previous state of ignorance, and the red pill takes him forward into knowledge of the true state of reality.

Okay, so it was kind of obvious. Sometimes the obvious answer is the right one.

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Raymond Chen

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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  • Dominic Hayes · Edited

    BetaWiki noted in their page about a build leak of Server 2012 (8064 fbl_srv_msp_std) that a piece of included tooling checks for Redpill, and if failed prints the path to an internal file called “Welcome%20to%20SuperPill.docx”.

    Is SuperPill Redpill’s original name, an alternative name for Redpill, or a generic name shared between Redpill and Windows 7’s equivalent whom people call “Bluepill”?

  • alan robinson

    Why the need for secrecy? In fact, the Win8 UI was a huge disappointment, one we still have to deal with if we want to change windows settings, etc. If the biggest reason you think people will be excited about your UI was "oh what a surprise" then it's a pretty big fail. Methinks maybe they realized they were working on a real dog of a UI and were hoping to get to the point that it was too late to throw it all away.

    If I wanted my apps to look like web sites... I'd make a website,...

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  • GL · Edited

    Edit: Buggy website. This is in reply to Shawn Van Ness.

    I’m personally a huge fan of Windows 8 UI/UX (and I do use it on desktops) and think Windows UI has been mostly going downhill since Windows 10. (I still couldn’t get over why Windows 11 removed the drag gesture for jump list, which has been there since Windows 7.)

    Methodologically, there’s no clear advantage between small-team and global-feedback development models. They will surely have different outcomes: Windows would never get such a revolution as Windows 8 UI/UX if Microsoft asks what the customers want.

    Also, the big picture was somewhat predictable...

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  • Sam

    I’d love to hear more from you about the history of WinRT, in particular the Metro XAML model.
    My suspicion is that the Metro UI evolved from DirectUI.
    Was Microsoft playing around with the core of WinRT prior to Win8?

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