Microsoft vows to make Windows 11's File Explorer much faster — and it's about time | Tech Radar

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Microsoft vows to make Windows 11's File Explorer much faster — and it's about time

The bid to make File Explorer faster isn't just about preloading

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Microsoft will be doing more to File Explorer to make it faster

This goes beyond the existing work to help it load more quickly the first time it's used

It includes 'targeted optimizations' to further speed up launch, and 'foundational engineering to eliminate unnecessary disk reads, reduce hangs, and improve responsiveness across the board'

A Microsoft executive has confirmed that work on speeding up File Explorer won't be limited to just preloading the app when Windows 11 first boots, and in fact there are multiple further performance boosting tweaks planned.

You may recall that when the preloading change went into testing late last year, there was some grumbling about it being rather a fudge of a fix, and complaints that it didn't address all of the issues with the performance of File Explorer (the app that drives your desktop folders).

Windows Latest reports that Tali Roth, who is Microsoft's Head of Product, Windows Shell, explained on X that there's more to come with File Explorer, responding to a post which noted that many felt that the preloading solution was 'inelegant'.

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Roth said that Microsoft is "driving targeted optimizations to File Explorer launch by improving load order and optimizing critical paths, along with removing unnecessary work and visual animations."

Roth added: "Beyond launch, we're doing the foundational engineering to eliminate unnecessary disk reads, reduce hangs, and improve responsiveness across the board, many of which will also directly benefit launch performance."

If you missed the whole incident around preloading, this move was about tackling the fact that on some Windows 11 PCs, File Explorer can take ages to open the first time you use it (with subsequent folders opening more swiftly). Microsoft's tactic was to shift the main loading process of File Explorer to happen when Windows 11 first boots, so that it's available more snappily the first time it's run.

Of course, that does add to the workload of Windows 11 when it's first firing up the desktop and all the initial processes therein – but Microsoft has successfully made the change without any noticeable additional sluggishness here.

That said, it is still something of a fudge of a performance fix, so it's good to hear that Microsoft is exploring other ways to speed up File Explorer. Especially given that the preloading is only about the first-run experience for File Explorer anyway, and it doesn't do anything to pep up how fast the app responds on subsequent usage.

The aim to bring in general optimizations for File Explorer and reduce drive activity sounds pretty in-depth, with the reference to "foundational engineering" being the key clue here as to how far Microsoft is digging down into the inner workings of Windows 11 to smooth over performance.

Microsoft is very much in a mood for making big promises about Windows 11 this year, of course, and as I keep repeating, it's one thing to say these things and another to actually realize them. To be fair to the company, though, progress is being made speedily enough, and so far, the early results of the 'fix Windows 11 campaign' look impressive.

There's a long way to go yet, though, and as far as File Explorer is concerned, the obvious question is: why were the foundations of this critical part of the Windows 11 interface in a shakier-than-ideal state to begin with, anyway?

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Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for Tech Radar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).

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