Microsoft's File Explorer learns a trick from Google Chrome

Google’s Chrome browser was one of the first to run browser tabs in separate processes, meaning when a browser tab crashed the whole browser session, including all your other tabs, were not all lost at the same time.

It seems Microsoft is learning a trick from Chrome, but not in the web browser space, but rather the file system space.

WinBuzzer report that Windows 10 Insider testers of the May 2019 update are finding that the File Explorer is now using separate processes for each Folder being viewed, which should mean more resilience to File Explorer crashes. Now when a folder stalls users should simply be able to close them, rather than having to restart Explorer.exe in some way.

The feature is enabled in the May 2019 update by default but can be turned off in the Folder options as seen in the screenshot above.

Hopefully, the change will not bring any unintended consequences, but the extended testing in the Release Ring of the May 2019 update will hopefully catch any before this improvement hits mainstream consumers.