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Photos (Windows)
Microsoft Photos is an image viewer and image organizer developed by Microsoft. It was first included in Windows 8 in 2012 as a functional replacement for Windows Photo Viewer and Windows Photo Gallery. In 2017, it replaced Windows Movie Maker.
In 2024, Photos transitioned from the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) to the Windows App SDK. The app began running in the background at Windows' startup in order to improve the app startup speed, being also integrated into File Explorer's context menu.
Photos is a single-instance app that can organize digital photos and videos in its gallery into albums. The default view is Gallery (previously called Collection in Windows 10), which sorts media by date. Users can also view items by Folder (previously Album) and add items to the existing ones. The folder view shows both auto-generated and user-generated albums. The folder view displays files based on their location in the file system or on OneDrive. Users can choose what folders are displayed and which files are placed in albums. Starting in 2021, the app introduced a filmstrip for easier navigation and a multi-view mode to compare multiple photos and videos side by side. In 2024, Microsoft enhanced the integration between OneDrive and the Photos app, enabling generating shareable links directly from the context menu when selecting a photo or video.
In 2019, Microsoft worked with Apple Inc. to bring the iCloud app to Windows 10. By 2022, Microsoft Photos on Windows 11 was updated to support iCloud Photos integration within its gallery, although still requiring the iCloud app to be installed. In 2024, the iCloud integration was backported to the Windows 10 app.
Between Windows 8 and 10, having Microsoft Photos pinned to the Start menu would automatically trigger a continuous slideshow of gallery images in its tile. Due to battery drainage, the May 2020 Update modified this behavior so the slideshow only activates when the Start menu is opened. Tiles were removed in Windows 11.
Windows 11 2022 Update introduced a Memories tab that automatically organizes media from OneDrive based on date and location, generating themed albums such as Last week through the years or Trip to Tuscany 2021. The 2023 Update reintroduced the timeline scrollbar and improved the slideshow experience, allowing 25 predefined soundtracks to be played during the slideshow. The Windows Explorer-like experience of selecting multiple media by holding down the Shift or Ctrl keys was also added.
Starting in 2024, the Windows 11 app began indexing images stored in OneDrive, automatically identifying content such as car, beach or birthday to make them searchable via the search bar. The update also included the ability to search by location. In 2025, devices with the "Copilot+ PC" branding began having a separate semantic image indexing, enabling the system to extract descriptions like Sunset at the beach from pictures saved locally and integrating them with Windows Search and Photos' search bar.
In 2025, Microsoft Photos introduced optical character recognition (OCR) support, being able to detect text in over 160 languages from a picture and extracting it to the clipboard or sending it to Bing Search. An option was added to show up files located in subfolders inside the Gallery.
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Photos (Windows) AI simulator
(@Photos (Windows)_simulator)
Photos (Windows)
Microsoft Photos is an image viewer and image organizer developed by Microsoft. It was first included in Windows 8 in 2012 as a functional replacement for Windows Photo Viewer and Windows Photo Gallery. In 2017, it replaced Windows Movie Maker.
In 2024, Photos transitioned from the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) to the Windows App SDK. The app began running in the background at Windows' startup in order to improve the app startup speed, being also integrated into File Explorer's context menu.
Photos is a single-instance app that can organize digital photos and videos in its gallery into albums. The default view is Gallery (previously called Collection in Windows 10), which sorts media by date. Users can also view items by Folder (previously Album) and add items to the existing ones. The folder view shows both auto-generated and user-generated albums. The folder view displays files based on their location in the file system or on OneDrive. Users can choose what folders are displayed and which files are placed in albums. Starting in 2021, the app introduced a filmstrip for easier navigation and a multi-view mode to compare multiple photos and videos side by side. In 2024, Microsoft enhanced the integration between OneDrive and the Photos app, enabling generating shareable links directly from the context menu when selecting a photo or video.
In 2019, Microsoft worked with Apple Inc. to bring the iCloud app to Windows 10. By 2022, Microsoft Photos on Windows 11 was updated to support iCloud Photos integration within its gallery, although still requiring the iCloud app to be installed. In 2024, the iCloud integration was backported to the Windows 10 app.
Between Windows 8 and 10, having Microsoft Photos pinned to the Start menu would automatically trigger a continuous slideshow of gallery images in its tile. Due to battery drainage, the May 2020 Update modified this behavior so the slideshow only activates when the Start menu is opened. Tiles were removed in Windows 11.
Windows 11 2022 Update introduced a Memories tab that automatically organizes media from OneDrive based on date and location, generating themed albums such as Last week through the years or Trip to Tuscany 2021. The 2023 Update reintroduced the timeline scrollbar and improved the slideshow experience, allowing 25 predefined soundtracks to be played during the slideshow. The Windows Explorer-like experience of selecting multiple media by holding down the Shift or Ctrl keys was also added.
Starting in 2024, the Windows 11 app began indexing images stored in OneDrive, automatically identifying content such as car, beach or birthday to make them searchable via the search bar. The update also included the ability to search by location. In 2025, devices with the "Copilot+ PC" branding began having a separate semantic image indexing, enabling the system to extract descriptions like Sunset at the beach from pictures saved locally and integrating them with Windows Search and Photos' search bar.
In 2025, Microsoft Photos introduced optical character recognition (OCR) support, being able to detect text in over 160 languages from a picture and extracting it to the clipboard or sending it to Bing Search. An option was added to show up files located in subfolders inside the Gallery.