Microsoft Rolls Out New Photos App Update for Windows 11
News | By Stephan Jukic | September 24, 2022
The often slow, clunky, glitchy, generally bad Photos app for Windows 11 has gotten an update that’s now being rolled out by Microsoft.
The new edition of the app was announced to the public by Dave Grochocki, Principal Product Manager Lead at Microsoft, who described some of its improvements and changes. According to Grochocki, Photos now has a new gallery view, improved “Memories” features and offers a generally “new photos-managing experience” for users. He elaborated on these updates and changes in a blog post on the Windows.com website.
Other improvements described by the Product Manager are simplified “browsing, finding, management and consumption” of photos in a user’s collection through the new gallery design. He also vaguely describes the Memories feature with very little detail and then also briefly explains that the Photos app now allows users to easily safeguard their photos through OneDrive backups.
Image credit: Windows
On the other hand, as others have noted, the new version of Photos for Windows 11 lacks a video editor. This legacy component of the old Photos app has been killed off in favor of something called Clipchamp, which was acquired by Microsoft last year and installed as the company’s inbox video editor in March of 2022.
As Grochocki explains, “Earlier this year, we introduced Clipchamp as our new inbox video editor, which is focused on making video creation easy, fast, and fun on Windows,” He further elaborates that, “As Clipchamp is equipped with all the basic tools you’d expect, like trimming and splitting, as well as more pro-style features like transitions and animated text, the new Photos app experience no longer includes the legacy Video Editor.”
Users who want to continue with the legacy video editor can still download it from the Microsoft Store as “Microsoft Photos Legacy.”
Microsoft is rolling out the Photos app update gradually so far and monitoring feedback as it does so. However, in another blog post by Microsoft’s Chief Product Officer Panos Panay, it was clarified that the Photo app would hit all Windows 11 users in October.
Those of us who always had problems with the old Photos app can soon find out if the updated version is just as wonderfully crappy for so many seemingly simple things.
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Stephan Jukic is a technology and photography journalist and experimental photographer who spends his time living in both Canada and Mexico. He loves cross-cultural street photo exploration and creating fine art photo compositions.
