Windows 11 is getting Google Photos-like search for OneDrive Photos

Microsoft is rolling out a major update to Windows Search for PC Copilot+, bringing Google Photos-like search functionality to OneDrive Photos

Google Photos and Google Drive are currently the cloud storage services that many people choose to use. Especially the ability to organize and search all photos on the data storage service. And according to the latest information, Microsoft is integrating the search function of Google Photos into OneDrive Photos Windows 11.

Microsoft is rolling out a major update to Windows Search for Copilot+ PCs, allowing users to easily find photos stored in the cloud using natural language queries. This update adds semantic indexing and search for locally downloaded files. Now, Windows Insiders on Copilot+ PCs running Snapdragon can take advantage of that semantic indexing to enable descriptive search on files in OneDrive directly in File Explorer.

Windows 11 is getting Google Photos-like search for OneDrive Photos Picture 1Windows 11 is getting Google Photos-like search for OneDrive Photos Picture 1

For example, you can type "European castles" or "summer picnics" into the File Explorer search bar and see related images from your computer and your OneDrive account. In addition, exact matches in the text of cloud files will also appear in search results. By extending this feature to OneDrive search, Microsoft is now bringing Google Photos-like search functionality to the cloud service and integrating it right into Windows 11.

The only downside here is that this feature is currently limited to Copilot+ PCs, as it relies on the NPU inside those PCs. This is a big miss, as Google Photos search works on all phones, even without an NPU.

This feature is rolling out to Insiders with Snapdragon PCs right now. If you have an x86 Copilot+ PC, you'll have to wait a little longer.

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