Microsoft Revamps OneDrive with New Windows App and AI-Powered Features

Is your PC drowning in photos? Microsoft's new OneDrive app can help - try it now

I snap a lot of photos that I store not just on my phone but on my Windows PC. And with more than 15,000 photos in my library, I could use a helping hand managing them all. Now, Microsoft is providing that help with a couple of new tools heading to Windows 11. First up is a new OneDrive Windows app. Currently, Windows 10 and 11 both offer limited options for interacting with your local photos and other files in OneDrive. You can view and manage your folders and files. You can tweak different settings through the OneDrive system tray icon. But that's about it. The new OneDrive Windows app provides a friendlier and more flexible overview of your OneDrive storage. Though the app is designed to work with all your OneDrive files, it pays special attention to your photos. With its more unified layout, as described by Microsoft, the app lets you switch among different views, including Moments, Gallery, Albums, People, and Favorites. If those views sound familiar, that's because OneDrive for the web uses the same menus and features. The difference is that you'll be able to use the app directly within Windows rather than having to browse to your OneDrive storage site to take advantage of the enhanced layout. With some of the views, you can hover over a photo to view information on it, delete it, share it, or tag it as a favorite. Opening a specific photo allows you to delete it, download it, share it, add it to an album, or edit it. The photo editor offers a basic but useful set of tools through which you can crop a photo, adjust the brightness and other elements, apply a filter, or mark it up with text. Each screen also features a handy search tool. Here, just enter a word or term based on the photos you want to find. In response, the app displays all the relevant photos in your library. For now, the app is only able to work with your cloud-based files. But Microsoft is developing it further so that you'll be able to view and manage your local photos and other files as well. What's especially cool is that the app is already available for you to try, both in Windows 10 and 11. To access it via File Explorer, head to C:\Users\[your username]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\OneDrive. You should spot a file called OneDrive.App.exe. If not, head to C:\Program Files\Microsoft OneDrive instead. Open the OneDrive.App.exe and you'll see the new app and be able to check out all its features. Presumably, Microsoft will better integrate the new app into Windows at some point so that you won't have to hunt through File Explorer to launch it. Next up is a new tool called Photos Agent that taps into Copilot. Using the built-in AI, you can find and share your favorite photos. Copilot will help you track down specific photos by name and other criteria. You're then able to create albums and share them with family and friends. The new Photos Agent will arrive soon for Microsoft 365 Copilot for Windows and the web, as well as for Microsoft 365 Premium subscribers. Finally, a couple of new tools are rolling out soon for the OneDrive mobile app for both iOS and Android. The AI mobile editing tool lets you tweak photos on your mobile device using different styles. The Photo Stacks tool displays blurry or duplicate photos in a single stack. From there, Microsoft 365 subscribers will be able to clean up those photos based on the AI's suggestions.

OneDrive is getting a new Windows app and an AI photo agent

Microsoft is getting ready to release a new OneDrive app on Windows next year that will include a photo gallery, people view, AI-powered slideshows, and editing features. It's part of a number of new features coming to OneDrive in the coming months, including a new Photos Agent and AI-powered mobile editing. The new OneDrive app on Windows is a big redesign compared to the existing desktop app. Instead of a tiny flyout on the taskbar, it's a full app that's a lot more like OneDrive's mobile app. It includes a new gallery view of all your cloud photos and a dedicated people view that detects faces in photos and lets you name them. OneDrive on Windows will also work with local photos soon, letting you edit images and then keep them locally on a drive or upload them to Microsoft's cloud storage service. Microsoft is also adding even more Copilot integration into OneDrive, with a new Photos Agent that will be available for Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft 365 Premium subscribers. It's like a chatbot for your photos, letting you ask for a collection of holiday photos, or to recall particular points in time. Copilot will then find photos and allow you to build albums, too. OneDrive on iOS and Android is also getting AI mobile editing soon, with the ability to turn photos into animated styles. You'll be able to easily clean up blurry or duplicated shots from the mobile app, and a new moments tab has already started rolling out that surfaces older photos and "on this day" memories. Microsoft has also launched a big update to the way OneDrive users share documents. A new "hero link" feature means you can simply copy the URL of a OneDrive document instead of having to share special links to people. It's identical to the way Google Docs has operated for years, and finally makes it easy for people to request access to files instead of getting an ugly access denied message.

Microsoft OneDrive Is Getting an Overhaul

Microsoft just dropped a bombshell of updates for OneDrive. The company is once again forcing more Copilot features into another app in its suite, but that is coming with other changes that will make OneDrive a lot better for users. Microsoft is finally tackling the file management and sharing headache. One of the most frustrating things about sharing documents was sending people a link and them immediately running into an "access denied" page. This is a single, primary link identical to the URL in your address bar that governs all access. Basically, you can finally adjust the permissions without ever having to resend a new link, which is exactly how Google Docs has operated for years. AI has been crammed here too, with Copilot being able to generate a quick summary to give instant context before the file is opened. Microsoft will also release a dedicated OneDrive app for Windows next year. It's a complete redesign, ditching the tiny taskbar flyout for a full app that feels much more like the mobile version. The new app brings a ton of photo-focused features, too. It will come with a new gallery, a people view that detects faces, and AI-made slideshows. Aside from the cloud photos, you'll soon be able to edit local photos directly within OneDrive on Windows. On the mobile front, the photo experience is getting an upgrade with a Moments tab that curates memories and an upcoming Photo Shuffle feature for rediscovering old favorites. Also, there's the new Photos Agent that acts like a chatbot for your photo library. You can ask for things like "holiday photos from last summer" or to build an album, and Copilot does all the heavy lifting. The biggest news on the AI side of things is that the familiar Copilot icon is now built directly into the OneDrive web experience. This will be right next to your files and ready to activate with a single click. If you have a Copilot license, the AI will do tasks for you. For example, if you have a massive PDF or a long meeting recording, you can get Copilot to make a summary you can use. You can also ask it to recap your sessions and spotlight your mentions for an easy follow-up. The AI can also extract and interpret key details from images, like a whiteboard sketch, or you can ask it direct questions about your files, such as "What are the main action items in this deck?" Another feature is the ability to compare versions of a document, highlighting the differences to make those long reviews and approvals faster. Copilot in OneDrive is also adding audio overviews. You can choose an executive or podcast-style summary, similar to NotebookLLM by Google, and Copilot will create an audio file with the key insights from your document. You can listen to the rundown of a 20-page proposal while you're commuting. At this point, we should expect even more AI with time, but at least this time we get upgrades like the file sharing improvement that make the app easier to use. Microsoft OneDrive See at microsoft Expand Collapse Source: Microsoft, The Verge

Microsoft OneDrive now lets you talk to your files, and do a whole lot more

Microsoft is pushing what looks like the biggest feature update to OneDrive in a long time. After pushing Copilot AI tools in the Office suite of apps and integrating agents powered by Anthropic's Claude chatbot, Microsoft is pushing similar perks to its cloud storage users. Let's start with Copilot AI, which is being integrated in the same fashion as Gemini across Google services. AI for files, but the meaningful kind In OneDrive, users now see a new floating Copilot icon that will let them perform tasks by simply describing the chore at hand. For example, you can pick any PDF, doc, slide, or image file, and have Copilot summarize its contents for you. It can also offer a recap of meetings, extract details from images, and answer specific questions, as well. Microsoft says you can ask Copilot to perform tasks using natural language commands such as "What are the main action items in this deck?" and "Show me changes from this document since the last version." Interestingly, Copilot can also turn meeting summaries into audio overviews, just the way Google's NotebookLM tool turns study and research material into interactive podcasts. Recommended Videos OneDrive is also getting the ability to create dedicated one-click shortcuts for files and folders so that you can quickly access them in the file manager. Additionally, the File Explorer is getting a dedicated section where all the assets shared via OneDrive are clubbed together. Ease of sharing, searching, and editing Microsoft's cloud storage service is also getting a new system called hero links. Essentially, it's somewhat similar to how Google Drive links work, where you simply add a person and then decide their level of access, such as editor, viewer, and more. OneDrive is going a step further by generating a summary so that the recipient of these hero links gets an idea about the contents. Another convenient addition is bulk transfer, which lets users transfer the entire cache of files from one owner to another. Finally, Copilot is also getting an AI-powered search feature that lets users find media by describing it in words. And on mobile devices, they can use AI for editing and also club blurry photos to get a sharper shot using a new Photo Stacks feature.