Photos (Windows)

Microsoft Photos

A component of Microsoft Windows
Photos in Windows 10 in light mode
Details
Included with	Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile, Xbox One, Windows Mixed Reality
Replaces	Windows Photo Viewer, Windows Photo Gallery

Microsoft Photos is an image viewer, image organizer, photo editor and photo sharing app included with the Windows 8 and Windows 10 operating systems as a functional replacement for Windows Photo Viewer and a partial replacement for Photo Gallery. It was first included as one of many Metro apps new to Windows 8 that could be uninstalled from the system. In Windows 10, it is integrated more deeply with the operating system and cannot be uninstalled without third-party software.

Photos is a Windows Store app and has received major feature updates. Photos has Microsoft Sway integration and can use selected photos as a source for creating a Sway. Photos also allows sharing of photos by uploading them to OneDrive, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, GroupMe, and emails. Unlike Photo Gallery, Photos does not have integration with Movie Maker and cannot directly interact with it.

Photos has two interfaces, a management interface and a viewing interface.

Photos' management interface only allows a single window to be open.

Photos provides the ability to organize digital photo collection in its gallery view by selecting photos and arranging photos by albums. The default view is Collection, which is sorted by date. Users can also view items by Album or Folder view. Album view shows both auto-generated and user-generated albums. Folder view displays files based on their location in File Explorer. Users can choose which folders to display.

Users can choose what folders are displayed and which files are placed in albums. They can also see their total used OneDrive space in the Settings section.