The File Explorer was mostly left alone on Windows 8 and 10, but it has received a few major updates on Windows 11. Microsoft is now working on another improvement: a photo gallery view.
Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 23435 is now rolling out to Windows Insider testers in the Dev Channel, and it includes a new gallery view in the File Explorer. It’s accessible from a Gallery option in the sidebar menu (next to your cloud storage and favorited folders), and displays your recent photos stored in a grid layout.
The gallery shows images from your PC’s files, with the option to add or remove specific folders from the panel, mixed in with photos from your OneDrive cloud storage. For example, if you have camera backups enabled in the OneDrive app on your phone, you’ll see recent images appear automatically in the gallery view. Microsoft says it works exactly like the All Photos view in the system Photos app.
You’ll also see the gallery view as an option inside the file picker in other applications. That should make it easier to find a recent photo across every application, without digging through all your folders or using the system search.
The new gallery is in the earliest stages of testing, so it could be a while before it rolls out to all Windows 11 computers. Microsoft is also testing an updated codebase for the File Explorer that uses WinUI 3 instead of WinUI 2.
Source: Windows Blog
