OneDrive is getting a glow-up, promising an optimized interface and power-packed features to help you navigate your files

Microsoft has given OneDrive a visual and functional makeover, rolling it out in an update for OneDrive personal users. 

The update was announced last month by Microsoft, promising a revamped OneDrive user experience with a revised sleek design and powerful new features. Now, the update is actually rolling out to OneDrive personal users.

The tech titan posted the announcement on its official blog and it’s begun the gradual rollout to users, stating that the changes will be available to all OneDrive personal users by the end of February. It elaborates that the changes are purposely designed to help users perform tasks more quickly in OneDrive, as well as find it easier to focus on their files.

One of the new features that users can look forward to is People View. This will show users their contacts with all of the files that they collaborate on together – so you don’t have to remember the names of files if they’re shared between you and a contact. Often, we can remember who we share files with or who shares files with us more easily than a specific file’s name. Additionally, users will be able to filter files by type, so if you want to see all the Word documents or Excel spreadsheets on your OneDrive, you can use specific Word or Excel filters while searching. 

 Additional OneDrive functionality 

Microsoft has also expanded the Add New button’s functionality to give users the options to both upload to OneDrive or to begin a new document. Being able to do either from a single button, Microsoft hopes this will make working on OneDrive more streamlined for users. 

It looks like these upgrades will apply to all users with a OneDrive account. You can access OneDrive on desktop with Microsoft 365 or online for free with a Microsoft account. In its announcement blog post, Microsoft also mentions that it’s open to feedback and you can provide your opinion in the OneDrive feedback portal. 

It’s a solid set of developments for OneDrive that Microsoft willlooks set to deliver for a better organized and faster serviceOneDrive, as long as these changes arrive on time. If Microsoft continues along this path for OneDrive, I could see OneDrive becoming more and more users’ choice of cloud storage. You may be able to see these changes already if you have OneDrive but everyone or should be able to access them before the end ofsome time in  February. 

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Windows 11 gets smart interface changes and new voices

Windows 11 has a new preview out in the Dev Channel which comes with some smart tweaks for the interface, and some better, more natural, voices for Narrator.

Narrator – the built-in tool which reads out the contents of the screen for you, such as a web page, for example – now has two new natural voices in English US (female), which are called ‘Jenny’ and ‘Aria’. Users can select whichever they prefer, and once the voices are downloaded and installed, they work without an internet connection.

Microsoft has also introduced some new keyboard shortcuts for Narrator in order to more easily facilitate switching between different voices (and more besides).

The new preview build 22543 further applies some small, but nifty, tweaks to the desktop interface, including for resizing snapped windows. When you’re doing this, the snapped windows (aside from the main one) are blurred out and overlaid with their relevant app icon. It’s a pretty cool effect that makes it slightly easier to see exactly how much space you’re granting these snapped windows.

Furthermore, the media control fly-out panel on the lock screen has now been changed to match the controls in Quick Settings. This particular tweak is only rolling out to a limited number of testers at the moment, and feedback will be evaluated before a wider rollout commences. In other words, don’t be surprised if you aren’t getting this yet.

As ever, there are a bunch of fixes for Windows 11 delivered in this preview, and that includes the solution to a crashing issue with File Explorer that happens when dragging a file out of a ZIP. All the work done is summed up in Microsoft’s blog post on the new build (along with the inevitable known issues with an early preview – expect some unknown ones, too).


Analysis: Pacey progress with accessibility features

Continued progress on the accessibility front is good to see, in terms of the more natural-sounding voices for Narrator, which have already been welcomed by testers who use the feature. Presumably we will see more options for different voices rolling out before long.

Accessibility is something Microsoft has rightly been prioritizing in Windows, with the most recent major move being the introduction of full voice control capabilities (built using Nuance’s Dragon speech recognition tech), and a virtual keyboard you can type with using your voice. Work on accessibility has been going on for years, of course, and bringing in very useful features like eye tracking which debuted almost five years ago with Windows 10.

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