Microsoft is set to launch a revamped OneDrive application for Windows next year, introducing an array of features including a photo gallery, people view, AI-driven slideshows, and enhanced editing tools. This marks a broader initiative to integrate several upcoming features in OneDrive, such as a new Photos Agent and AI-assisted mobile editing capabilities.
The upcoming OneDrive app will see a significant redesign from the current desktop version. Unlike the previous compact taskbar flyout, this new application resembles its mobile counterpart much more closely, featuring a gallery view that showcases all cloud-stored photos, alongside a dedicated people view that can recognize and label faces in images.
The updated OneDrive app will also allow users to work with local images. Users can edit photos and save them directly to their local storage or upload them to Microsoft’s cloud service.
Further integration of Copilot features is on the horizon, featuring a new Photos Agent exclusively for Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft 365 Premium subscribers. This will function as a chatbot for photos, allowing users to request specific collections, such as holiday moments, and facilitate album creation.
On both iOS and Android, OneDrive will soon feature AI-enhanced mobile editing, allowing users to transform their photos into dynamic styles. The mobile app will enable easy removal of blurry or duplicated images. A new moments tab is also being rolled out, designed to highlight older photos along with “on this day” memories.
Additionally, Microsoft has introduced a significant upgrade to the document-sharing features within OneDrive. The new “hero link” option allows users to copy a direct URL for a OneDrive document, streamlining access and replacing the need for special links. This aligns OneDrive’s functionality more closely with Google Docs, facilitating file access requests instead of users receiving access denied alerts.
