Microsoft Photos app on Windows 11 will soon be able to run in the background at startup

Microsoft Photos has been undergoing quite a few changes for some time. The natively built-in app within the Windows 11 ecosystem has added the Copilot AI, letting you search for context within the images through OCR (Optical Character Recognition), a feature that’s akin to Google Photos as well.

And now, there’s a new addition to the native app. Windows 11 insiders community have spotted a neat little change to Photos in the Canary experimental channel. As shared by trusted spotter @PhantomOfEarth on X (formerly Twitter), there’s an option in the Settings that lets your system to run the Photos app in the background at startup “to improve performance.”

The update is now live on Photos’ latest update, v. 2024.11060.27001.0. We weren’t able to independently verify this as we’re on a different channel, but chances are Microsoft may soon document this in further releases.

Not too long ago, Microsoft also said that the native app had transitioned from UWP to the Windows App SDK, starting from version 2024.11050.3002.0. And thanks to this change, we get new features like Slideshow and AI-powered Generative Erase and benefits from using WebView2 for better image rendering and integration with the latest Chromium updates.

In fact, the Generative Erase feature is so good that Microsoft had to bring it to Edge’s image creator, Designer. It works just fine, almost akin to what Adobe Photoshop currently offers.

Microsoft Photos has a not-so-good reputation and notoriety for being extremely slow, which probably prompted Microsoft’s decision to bring this feature to life in the first place. While Microsoft did try to make things right by the transition to WinAppSDK and improving viewer load time by 2.1x, years-lasting complaints of users are still around.