Microsoft is planning some big changes for how you interact with OneDrive, Window’s built-in cloud backup system. The company has been pushing OneDrive more and more with its various subscription plans — even offering a free way for OneDrive users on Windows 10 to keep using the dying operating system after it’s official end of life later this month. Despite offering its own apps on smartphones like the Galaxy S25 or iPhone 17, though, the company’s Windows app has been notably lackluster since its inception. That’s set to change in the near future.
As part of a big featurette published to the Microsoft OneDrive Blog earlier this week, Microsoft has outlined a number of ways the company improving how you use its various apps and systems, including a brief look at an upcoming OneDrive app that implements Copilot AI features, as well as an easier way to navigate your saved photos and other images.
OneDrive joins the AI party
Based on a short GIF shared in the blog post, it looks like Microsoft is introducing better search and answer capabilities that use Copilot to help you find things within your saved OneDrive files. This should, hopefully, make it easier to navigate through your backups. Additionally, the company notes that it will introduce agentic behavior in the app, allowing you to let AI do most of the work for you when it comes to different tasks. This includes a new M365 Copilot Researcher integration, which Microsoft says you can use to “go from files to strategy in just a few clicks” using Copilot.
Another big change is the implementation of a “unified OneDrive photos experience,” which will let you use AI to sort through all of the different saved images you have in your OneDrive cloud backup. This will be useful for those who choose to use OneDrive instead of other photo backup services like Google Photos. This new system will also allow for easier editing right inside of the OneDrive app, so you might not need third-party photo editing apps for minor changes. Microsoft hasn’t revealed when we can expect these changes to arrive, though the company says the updates are “on the horizon.”
