Microsoft’s New OneDrive Design Starts Rolling Out For Consumers

Microsoft is starting to roll out a new design for its OneDrive cloud storage service for consumers. The software maker first unveiled a Fluent design refresh for OneDrive last year, and it will be available to all OneDrive personal users by the end of February.

“It’s both a visual and functional upgrade designed to help you get to your files quickly and keep your content organized in multiple ways,” says Miceile Barrett, a Microsoft product manager. “The improved visual design reduces clutter and distractions, allowing you to focus on what’s important – your content.”

The new visual interface for OneDrive more closely matches Windows 11 and changes to Microsoft’s various Office apps. While the main interface has been simplified and modernized, there’s also a new people view so you can find files and documents by looking at the faces of family or friends with whom you regularly share documents. I often remember who shared a spreadsheet with me, but I can never remember the exact name of the file in a long list, so this interface will be super useful to me personally.

Microsoft has also added new file filters to this updated OneDrive UI, so you can filter the interface by Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or PDF files. The ‘add new’ button now includes options for both file uploads and new document creation using Office apps. That’s much better than the two separate buttons that exist in OneDrive for file uploads and new folders / documents.

There are many more changes planned for OneDrive and, in particular, business users. Microsoft is adding offline support, faster load times, and much more.