It was first announced on the launch of BBC's Make It Digital campaign on 12 March 2015[5][6] with the intent of delivering 1 million devices to pupils in the UK.

[20] The available hardware design documentation consist of only the schematic and BOM distributed under the Creative Commons By Attribution license, no PCB layout is available.

v2, released on 13 October 2020, includes:[23]In micro:bit v2, the reset button can be used to turn the board off by holding it for 3 seconds.

[28][29] Users are able to write Python scripts in the Micro Bit web editor which are then combined with the MicroPython firmware and uploaded to the device.

The BBC planned to give away the computer free to every Year 7 (ages 11 and 12) child in Britain starting from October 2015 - around 1 million devices.

[4][20] In advance of the roll-out an online simulator was made available to help educators prepare and some teachers were to receive the device in September 2015.

[41][42] The announcement was made on 18 October 2016 to a small group of journalists and educators at Savoy Place in London,[43] that included a review of the past year and their plans for the future.

[31][32] On 2 January 2018, it was announced that Gareth Stockdale from BBC Learning would succeed Zach Shelby as CEO of the Microbit Educational Foundation.