Microsoft Photos app with iCloud Photos integration is now available for all users

[harlan4096]

Microsoft added support for iCloud Photos in the Windows 11's Photos app for some users in the Dev Channel last month. This feature is now out of beta, it is available for all users, including those on the stable version of the operating system.



The version number of the Microsoft Photos app is 2022.31110.2008.0. When you update to it, the app points out that it can display photos from your PC, Phone, OneDrive and iCloud Photos.

The app's interface has been redesigned, so let's take a quick tour of it. The Photos app has a sidebar with various tabs, these shortcuts allow you to navigate various sections: All Photos, OneDrive, iCloud Photos, Favorites, Folders, and External Devices.

You can expand or collapse the sidebar by clicking the hamburger menu button, to show or hide the names of the tabs. The search bar at the top allows you to find photos by their name, type, date, month, etc. Click the import button to add images from other devices to your library. The Sort button lets you browse the image gallery by date and name, in ascending or descending order.

The filter button is useful if you want to view only videos or photos. The grid icon lets you select the size of the thumbnails. The Photos app's Settings page has various options from theme colors, to account management. The Photos app creates Memories and Albums by categorizing images from your OneDrive library and auto tags them with a title. The image viewer and editor in the new app are fairly identical to the old version's. However, it does not come with the old video editor, likely because Microsoft wants to push ClipChamp as the go-to editor. Please read the Microsoft Photos Legacy app section at the bottom of this article to learn how to restore it.

There are some useful additions to the app's context menu, such as the rename option that lets you rename pictures and videos directly (without opening explorer). You can backup your images to your OneDrive from the app's menu.

Now that iCloud Photos are supported in the Microsoft Photos app, let's see how we can access them.
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