Microsoft's Unintended Rollout: OneDrive Photos App Lands on Windows 11 PCs

Microsoft has confirmed that it accidentally installed its OneDrive Photos app on Windows 11 PCs, including enterprise versions where it's not supposed to be. The company told Windows Latest that the rollout was unintended and that they're working on a fix.

The OneDrive Photos app is an AI-powered photo viewer that shows photos from both local storage and the cloud. It loads OneDrive.com's Gallery and uses Microsoft Edge-based WebView2, but it doesn't use more than 1GB of memory even on high-RAM PCs.

The issue started when the pre-installed OneDrive sync client began downloading and installing the app in the background, regardless of whether a user had signed in to a Microsoft account or not. Enterprise PCs were also affected, with thousands of installations reported.

Microsoft has promised to fix the issue, but for now, users can't easily remove the app without deleting OneDrive entirely. IT admins are unhappy about the rollout, which they see as another example of Microsoft's lack of attention to detail.