Microsoft wants Windows to be the best place to access all your memories. Although the first versions of its new photo viewer were a disaster, over time it has improved to become one of the best apps for viewing and cataloging personal photos. Today, Microsoft has just presented the new version of its application, a new version that comes packed with changes, improvements and new features like the ones we are going to see below.
The new version of the photo viewer for Windows is now available for all users who are registered in the Insider program. Therefore, very soon (probably in time for the release of the next version of Windows 11) this new app will reach everyone so that we can take advantage of all its new features.
Let’s see all the changes that will come to us very soon.
What’s new in the Windows 11 Photos app
The first of the new features, and a long-awaited one, that we will find in this new version of the application is that it will finally allow us to access our iCloud library. Microsoft is aware that users are increasingly saving their photos in Google Photos and iCloud, and therefore wants to facilitate access to them via streaming.
The new version of this app will allow us to log in with our iCloud account and access our entire photo library from the app itself. Of course, we will depend on Apple’s app, iCloud for Windows, for this to work.
Another important change we found is in the interface. Specifically, in the navigation options. Microsoft has revamped this entire section to offer users the best possible experience with changes such as:
- New option to access all photos from all sources (OneDrive, PC, iCloud, etc.).
- Filters to access only photos from certain sources, such as iCloud.
- New section called “This PC” to access all folders on your computer to search for photos there.
Inside the viewer we will find a new button called “Visual Search with Bing”, which will allow us to search for an image directly in the Microsoft search engine to find identical or similar photos on the Internet.
Other important changes that we can find in this new version are:
- The Windows photo viewer will now run in the background. This will allow it to open much faster when we open a photo, greatly improving the user experience. If we don’t want it to stay open, we can disable this function from the settings.
- A new section called “Editor in Photos” has been added to the Windows context menu. This way, when we want to make changes and touch-ups to a photo, we can open it directly with this program.
- Windows App SDK and WinUI3 on Windows 10. Users of this operating system will benefit from the performance, quality and optimization advantages offered by these new technologies.
Try the new photo viewer
As we mentioned at the beginning, this new version of the Windows photo viewer is currently in the testing phase, so we will not be able to download and install it on our computer. What we can do, if we want, is sign up for the Microsoft Insider program to be able to access these test versions.
By doing so, we will be able to update to the new version of the Windows 11 photo viewer and, in addition, update to the 24H2 version of the operating system before anyone else, one of the most anticipated updates. If we don’t want to try the betas, it shouldn’t take long for the new version to reach us anyway.
