Microsoft just announced an overhauled Photos app for Windows 11, but that's for viewing images and videos. If you're interested in capturing content, you'll want to catch up on everything new in the Camera app.

A wave of changes to the Camera app recently shipped to Windows Insiders. They include several small improvements as well as some quality-of-life changes.

The Camera app can now zoom digitally when hardware zoom is unavailable. Microsoft has focused on the zoom experience in several updates this year. In June, the company started testing expanded support for more cameras.

Microsoft lists all the changes that are available for Windows Insiders:

• Improved the camera zoom experience and added support for software zoom when hardware zoom is unavailable. Software zoom isn't available for Living Images, scanning, panorama, spherical preview, or other specialized modes.
• Improved support for copying to your clipboard with Ctrl+C after capture.
• Added a new Copy path action after capturing a photo or video, allowing you to easily copy the file path.
• Delayed capture now shows the remaining seconds inside the timer ring.
• Recorded video playback now shows the remaining time beside the seek bar.
• Camera is more responsive and accurate when starting video.
• Fixed an issue where a white flash would sometimes appear when opening the app with Windows in light theme.

While changes to software zoom are the headline additions, some users may appreciate the new Copy path option and improved clipboard support more. Both features make it easier to move captured images and videos into apps and documents.

Those improvements first entered testing for Insiders in the Experimental, Experimental (26H1), and Experimental (Future Platforms) channels on October 2. They have since shipped to Beta and Release Preview Insiders as well.

With the feature progressing through Windows Insider channels, it should make its way to general users in the near future.

The Camera app improvements arrive for Windows Insiders shortly after Microsoft announced a major redesign of the Photos app. Together, the updates show Microsoft's commitment to improving Windows 11's built-in apps.

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PowerToys just added several new utilities and added new features for existing tools.

Two of the new utilities improve mouse use. Mouse Button Lock allows you to press and hold your mouse button down for a moment and then have your PC treat the input as if you've kept that button down. The tool improves accessibility for those who struggle to hold a mouse button down as they drag an item across the screen.

CursorHide is a smaller utility that hides the mouse pointer on your screen after a brief period of inactivity.

The quick-access shelf in Command Palette is an optional feature that shows pins below the search box.

Here are the highlights from the latest build of PowerToys, as shared by Microsoft:

Mouse Button Lock and CursorHide

• Holding a mouse button down during a long drag or selection can be tiring. With Mouse Button Lock, press and hold a button for a moment, then let go. Windows keeps treating it as held, so you can continue dragging or selecting until you click any button. This is especially useful for gaming, working in professional applications that require extensive dragging and selection, and improving accessibility for users who find it difficult to hold down a mouse button for extended periods.
• CursorHide is the second new mouse utility. It hides the mouse pointer while you type, after a period of inactivity, or both, and shows it again as soon as you move the mouse.

Command Palette gets a quick-access shelf

Compact mode in 0.101 kept Command Palette out of the way until you needed results. Now your favorite commands can be one keystroke away too. Turn on the quick-access shelf in Settings > Appearance > Compact mode to show your pins below the search box while the palette is collapsed. Press Alt+1 through Alt+9 to launch them, or Alt+Shift+number to select one without running it. Drag to reorder, right-click for more actions, and optionally show recent commands and apps next to your pins.

The shelf is just one part of a big Command Palette update:

• Settings search: Fuzzy search finds options, extensions, commands, aliases, and assigned shortcuts, then takes you straight to them.
• Keyboard-first Dock: Press Win+Alt+J to focus the dock and move between its items from the keyboard.
• Copilot key support: Choose Command Palette as the Copilot key app in Windows Settings, and press the key again to toggle the palette.
• Multiple clocks: Pin several dock clocks, each with its own time zone and format.
• Language and links: Pick an app language for Command Palette, and copy links that open a page, run a command, or jump to a specific setting.
• Polish: Sharper app icons, faster grid and gallery browsing, results that keep loading at the end of a list, and clearer nested menus.

ZoomIt adds snip dictation

ZoomIt can now capture what you say along with what you snip. Turn on Snip with dictation in the ZoomIt settings, then press Space while you drag out a snip and describe what you're capturing. ZoomIt transcribes your speech on your device, and a single paste delivers both the screenshot and your text. Dictation uses the microphone selected under Record.

ZoomIt also gets smooth zoom transitions, better audio pacing in recordings, and a fix for silent recordings on multichannel and spatial-audio devices.

New command-line tools

More of PowerToys can now be scripted from the terminal:

• Advanced Paste: Run built-in and custom actions without opening the UI, using files, stdin/stdout, or the clipboard. AI actions use your configured providers and policies.
• Light Switch: Check status, set or toggle the theme, and manage schedules, with JSON output.
• Settings: See which utilities are enabled, and turn them on or off even while PowerToys isn't running.
• Peek: Preview multiple files and folders from the command line.
• PowerDisplay: JSON Lines output makes results and errors easy to consume from scripts.
• On your PATH: FancyZones, Image Resizer, File Locksmith, and PowerDisplay commands now work from any terminal folder.

Keyboard Manager adds tap-alone remaps and easier editing

Keyboard Manager now supports tap-alone remaps. Tap a key by itself to trigger a different action, while the key keeps working normally in shortcuts and mouse combinations. Large remapping lists are easier to manage too, with search, modifier and app filters, and bulk deletion.

The new editor also gets a searchable key picker, so you can select any key, including media keys or keys your keyboard doesn't have, and build a full shortcut with just the mouse. Recording now only listens while the editor is in focus, and Tab moves you out of the recording field. IT admins can also deploy and export remapping profiles with DSC v3.

Other notable changes

• Color Picker and Text Extractor: Both move to WinUI 3, with a new overlay, editor, and magnifier for Color Picker. Your existing shortcuts and settings carry over.
• FancyZones: Scroll the mouse wheel while dragging a window to switch layouts, with an optional indicator showing the selected layout's name.
• Peek: Added read-only SQLite previews, file and subfolder counts with scanning progress for folders, a plain-text fallback, and Alt+Left/Alt+Right navigation between files.
• Screen Ruler: Measure in device-independent pixels to account for each monitor's scaling, with improved edge detection.
• Environment Variables: A new Remove duplicates action cleans up PATH while keeping the original order.
• Quick Accent: A searchable character reference in Settings lets you browse language sets and copy characters directly.
• Grab and Move: Exclude specific apps so they keep their normal modifier-key behavior.
• Shortcut Guide: Added shortcuts for Claude Desktop and Ableton Live, and made indexing more resilient to malformed manifests.
• Workspaces: Now asks for confirmation before launching an unverified app configured to run as administrator.
• Awake: Windows can now turn off the display while the PC is locked, without ending your keep-awake session.
• New+: Fixed a File Explorer memory leak and improved long-path handling.
• Settings: Added an interactive animated welcome scene, fixed a memory leak when switching pages, and kept module on/off preferences when a utility fails to load.

PowerToys has been one of my favorite Windows apps for a long time, and it is also a favorite of several members of our team at Windows Central. The app has a massive library of utilities that can be enabled or disabled, making it a great choice for casual PC users and power users.

PowerToys is also interesting to follow because it inspires the development of Windows 11. The newly announced Search experience for Windows 11 clearly takes some cues from PowerToys run and Command Palette.

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During its OneDrive and Copilot event, Microsoft announced a massive number of changes to its cloud storage platform. Many of the improvements center around using Copilot to find items and generate new content, but there is also a feature for sharing OneDrive links.

Now, when you share a file in OneDrive, you can continue to use the same link even after you change access or permissions to that file. Previously, you'd need to create a new link after changing those settings. Old links would continue to work, but over time you'd accumulate a bunch of different links to the same file.

With so many different links to the same file, it would be easy to accidentally share one with the wrong permissions. The new method of sharing, which relies on "hero links," can update access and permission settings while retaining the same link.

Support for hero links is rolling out now. In the future, Microsoft will add support for expiring hero links. With those, you can set an organization's hero links to expire automatically on a schedule.

Copilot and OneDrive

It may not have received the fanfare of the Windows and Surface event held earlier this month, Microsoft just held a OneDrive and Copilot event. The event highlighted several new capabilities to Copilot, such as analyzing files, organizing projects, and turning files into interactive HTML reports.

Custom skills in Copilot let you capture a process and save that process as a Markdown file, which helps ensure Copilot runs the same way every time when performing that process.

Copilot also makes it possible to use natural language to find a photo in OneDrive.

Microsoft also highlighted its refreshed Photos app for Windows. That app shocked me due to its responsiveness and quick loading times. It also has several new features, such as Map View that lets you browse photos based on their geographic location.

Microsoft's blog post about Copilot and OneDrive is almost 3,500 words, so I won't rehash all of it here. The change that I'm most excited about is the addition of hero links. I share a lot of files through OneDrive and send links across several group chats. Reducing that clutter will reduce my stress immensely when it comes to sorting access and permissions.

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ShareX has been around for almost two decades, but in its 19 years as a screen capture app, it has never received an update as large as the one that just shipped to testers. ShareX version 22.0.0 brings a massive number of changes to a completely overhauled app.

The update adds native screen recording, a new screen recorder bar, and support for recording content at 120 FPS. It also brings a number of quality-of-life changes, such as a restart button for screen recordings and the option to show or hide the screen recorder timer and recording button labels.

Screenshot functionality has also expanded. Several preexisting tools have been redesigned, and new tools have been added as well.

Since the update changes so much, it is expected to be less stable than other releases. But if you'd like to give it a try, you can download the preview of ShareX version 22.0.0.

Here's the entire change log from ShareX:

• Screen recording changes:
  • Added native screen recording support without relying on FFmpeg, enabled by default. ShareX
    • Added support for recording system audio.
    • Added support for recording microphone audio.
    • Added support for recording camera overlays. ShareX
  • Added a screen recorder bar that allows users to configure recording options before starting a recording: ShareX
    • Start delay.
    • System audio.
    • Microphone.
    • Camera.
    • Cursor.
    • Mouse highlighter.
  • Increased the screen recording FPS limit to 120.
  • Added an "Automatically start mouse highlighter" option for screen recording.
  • Added a "Restart" button to the screen recorder bar and system tray menu.
  • Added an option to show or hide the screen recording timer.
  • Added an option to show or hide screen recording button labels.
  • Recorder devices are no longer bundled.
• Added HDR screenshot color corrector option (Task settings -> Capture).
• ShareX installer and assemblies are now code-signed using a certificate provided by Ember Swan. Xenthys
• Added a warning before running unsigned installers.
• Added a wide range of new tools and redesigned all existing tools from scratch:
  • Screen & color:
    • Color picker
    • Mouse highlighter ShareX
    • Pin to screen
    • Ruler ShareX
    • Screen color picker
  • Images:
    • Background remover
    • Icon converter
    • Image beautifier
    • Image combiner
    • Image comparer
    • Image converter
    • Image editor
    • Image effects
    • Image resizer ShareX
    • Image splitter
    • Image thumbnailer
    • Image viewer
    • Image watermark
  • Video:
    • Animated GIF maker
    • Animated GIF trimmer ShareX
    • Video converter
    • Video player
    • Video thumbnailer
    • Video trimmer ShareX
  • Data & text:
    • Analyze image
    • Hash checker
    • Index folder
    • Metadata
    • OCR
    • QR code
    • Remote storage browser (supports Amazon S3, SFTP, FTPS, and FTP) ShareX
  • System:
    • Borderless window
    • Clipboard viewer
    • Inspect window
    • Monitor test
    • Network monitor ShareX
  • Added categorized grid layout for tools menu.
  • Added edit button to tools menu to be able to hide or show tools. ShareX
  • Include video files in image history window.
  • Added "Trim video" context menu option to main window and history windows.
  • Added "Trim animated GIF" context menu option to main window and history windows.
  • Added drag-and-drop upload overlay to main window.
  • Added customizable task buttons to bottom of notifications.
  • Added notification button size option.
  • Added search support to setting windows.
  • Upgraded project to .NET 10.
  • Update FFmpeg to 9.0.
  • Added Czech language support.
  • Added Swedish language support.
  • Added Hindi language support.
  • Added Thai language support.
  • Added Danish language support.
  • Translated all newly redesigned ShareX windows into 28 languages from scratch.
  • Improve smart eraser with edge-matching fills.
  • Added easter egg to about window.
  • Added easter egg to image editor. ShareX
  • Added support for Amazon S3 multi-part uploads.
  • Added an option to upload Amazon S3 parts concurrently. CubityFirst
  • Support remote deletion of Amazon S3 uploads.
  • Added img.fish file uploader.
  • Added Immich file uploader.
  • Added MEGA file uploader.
  • Migrate uPaste uploader to API v2.
  • Removed Vault.ooo file uploader.
  • Show start screen on first application run.
  • Added an always on top toggle to the main window title bar.
  • Added a theme toggle to the main window title bar. ShareX
  • Added cursor centered zoom support to image viewer with Ctrl + Mouse wheel.
  • Reset image viewer zoom with Middle click.
  • Added PNG compression level option.
  • Added PNG filter option.
  • Added JPEG chroma subsampling option.
  • Added adaptive quantizer GIF quality option.
  • Added BMP bit depth option.

If you've only used the Snipping Tool on Windows 11, you may be a bit overwhelmed by all of the options within ShareX. But the defaults in ShareX make it easy to start using the app. I've been using CTRL+Print Screen all morning to grab screenshots.

The revamped ShareX is impressive, but the main reason I love the app is that it lets you save screenshots as a JPEG. That's a small feature that's been around for ages, but it still remains unavailable in Snipping Tool.

I've only had ShareX version 22.0.0 for a few hours, but in that time the app has performed quickly. It's so snappy that it feels native to Windows 11. If you take a few minutes to customize ShareX's settings and shortcuts, it can become a powerful tool that justifies running at startup.

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Microsoft's Photos app is about to get a major upgrade. Microsoft recently highlighted how the app is faster, more efficient, and full of new features. The upgraded Photos app will feature a new Gallery, Editor, and Viewer.

Details about the new Photos app were shared in a Microsoft blog post, but images and videos have since shown off the level of improvement we can expect.

Based on early impressions of the app, the new Photos experience could be a go-to way to view and edit images on Windows 11 rather than an app you scroll past after right-clicking and selecting "Open with."

New features

The three main additions to the Photos app are the new Gallery, Editor, and Viewer. Those experiences are designed to, "help you rediscover and organize your collection, give you more capable tools for your favorite shots, and make the everyday experience faster," according to Microsoft.

The new Gallery gathers together photos from your PC, OneDrive, and iCloud into a single space. You can then search for images using text, filter photos to see specific people, or browse Moments created by the app or albums you've organized.

You can use natural language to find images in your gallery, such as searching "sunset at the beach." That saves you the hassle of searching for specific file names.

The new Editor loads 25 percent faster, according to Microsoft. It includes tools to crop, enhance, repair, and stylize photos.

Microsoft rebuilt the new Editor from the ground up with WinUI 3, which is the modern framework used to create apps. Notably, only certain parts of the new Photos app are built with WinUI 3.

On top of the normal features you'd expect from an editor, such as cropping an image, the new Photos app has some advanced features like Relight. With that tool, you can add up to three light sources to an image and dynamically adjust lighting in the photo.

Microsoft added support for editing and saving HEIC and WebP images as well as the ability to preserve the color and contrast of HDR photos throughout the editing process.

The new Viewer in the Photos app is also called "native" by Microsoft, though the blog post does not specify that it is built with WinUI 3. It now has better support for HDR viewing and supports more file types, including SVG files.

Speed improvements

I'm excited to try the new features in the Photos app, but the speed of the app is what has stood out to me the most. Diego Baca, Microsoft's Vice President of Design for Windows, shared a video showing the new gallery.

Baca scrolls within the Photos gallery and hundreds of photo previews load instantly. Even when pausing the video, there is only one instance of stuttering or the app having to take a moment to load images.

I thought for a moment I may have been judging the old Photos gallery too harshly, but a quick test put that concern to rest. Scrolling through my gallery on my main PC, which does not have the improved Photos app yet, I can watch thumbnails load one at a time. It's like switching from dial-up internet to broadband.

Several parts of the app have been sped up, such as Viewer launching 15 percent faster on average and up to 30 percent faster for HEIC images.

Earlier this year, we covered Microsoft's Rudy Huyn assembling a team to work on Windows apps. We've seen some of the fruits of that team already, but the new Photos app is by far the biggest improvement connected to them.

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