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ZDNET Highlights
- The new OneDrive Windows app can help you manage your photos.
- The new app is already available in Windows 10 and 11 for you to try.
- An upcoming new photo agent Copilot uses AI to find specific photos.
I take a lot of photos which I store not only on my phone but also on my Windows PC. And with over 15,000 photos in my library, I could use help managing them all. Now, Microsoft is providing that help with some new tools for Windows 11.
First up is a new OneDrive Windows app. Currently, both Windows 10 and 11 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 change various 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. Although the app is designed to work with all your OneDrive files, it pays special attention to your photos. With its more integrated layout, As described by MicrosoftThe app lets you switch between different views, including Moments, Gallery, Albums, People, and Favorites.
If those views look familiar, that’s because OneDrive for Web uses similar menus and features. The difference is that you’ll be able to use the app directly within Windows instead of having to browse to your OneDrive storage site to take advantage of the advanced layout.
Scene
- moment view: Automatically highlights key photos taken on specific dates a year ago. You can choose a specific date, shuffle through different moments and view an AI-generated slideshow of memorable photos.
- Gallery View: Displays all your photos in chronological order. Simply scroll down to go back in time through months and years. Here, you are able to zoom in and zoom out and change the look and layout of the screen.
- View Album: Shows you all the albums you’ve created for your photos. From this screen, you can also create a new album and select the photos you want to include.
- People’s viewpoint: Allows you to view photos of specific people. Select a person to view their photo or add someone’s name to find related photos.
- Favorite Scene: Shows photos you’ve tagged as favorites.
With some Views, you can hover over a photo to view information about it, delete it, share it, or tag it as a favorite. Opening a specific photo lets you delete, download, share, add to an album, or edit it. The photo editor offers a basic but useful set of tools through which you can crop the photo, adjust brightness and other elements, apply filters, or mark it up with text.
Each screen also has a convenient search tool. Here, simply enter a word or words 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 can also view and manage your local photos and other files.
how to reach
What’s especially nice is that this app is already available for you in both Windows 10 and 11. To access it via File Explorer, go to C:\Users\(your username)\AppData\Local\Microsoft\OneDrive. You should see a file named OneDrive.App.exe. If not, go to C:\Program Files\Microsoft OneDrive instead. Open OneDrive.App.exe and you’ll see the new app and all its features.
Presumably, Microsoft will at some point better integrate the new app into Windows so you don’t have to search through File Explorer to launch it.
Photo Agent and more
Next up is a new tool called Photo Agent that taps into Copilot. Using built-in AI, you can find and share your favorite photos. CoPilot will help you track specific photos based on name and other criteria. You are then able to create albums and share them with family and friends. The new Photo Agent will be coming soon to Microsoft 365 CoPilot for Windows and web, as well as Microsoft 365 Premium subscribers.
Finally, some new tools are being released soon for the OneDrive mobile app for both iOS and Android. AI mobile editing tool lets you make changes to photos on your mobile device using different styles. The Photo Stack tool displays blurred or duplicate photos in a single stack. From there, Microsoft 365 subscribers will be able to clean up those photos based on AI suggestions.
