Microsoft boasts that Windows 11 is now “up to 20% more responsive,” and the new Photos app also benefits from a big speed boost.
- Windows 11 is now “up to 20% more responsive,” Microsoft tells us, based on a benchmark of typical interface workloads
- Apparently, this performance improvement “can make an especially significant difference on PCs with 8GB of memory.”
- A new Photos app, which is much faster, is also available, along with changes to Windows 11’s Gallery and photo viewer.
Microsoft has highlighted how it is making Windows 11 faster and ensuring the operating system uses system RAM more optimally, while also introducing a new, higher-performing Photos app.
In a blog post, Microsoft explained how it has been tweaking Windows 11 to run faster and that: “The result is an up to 20% more responsive Windows experience, with improvements you can feel as soon as you start your PC.”
That 20% figure is pretty vague, but Microsoft says it’s based on measured speed increases in Windows 11 Search, the context menu, Settings, Start menu, as well as File Explorer (the folders on the desktop) and the Snipping Tool.
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These are performance increases seen in the most recent October update for Windows 11 (well, they were tested in the September preview update, but it’s the same thing) compared to the operating system as it was in early 2026. Naturally, performance will vary depending on the device and configuration, but the gist is clear: there is a considerable speed increase.
Microsoft notes that a big part of this snappier performance lies in better use of system resources and RAM, with improvements in memory management and efficiency.
The software giant notes: “That work can make an especially significant difference on PCs with 8GB of memory. Windows can now keep up to 2GB more active data in memory instead of moving it to slower storage, helping your PC stay responsive as you open more apps or browser tabs.”
They also tell us that Windows 11’s background RAM usage is being trimmed, so on PCs with just 8GB of memory (or less), widgets load only when they are opened, reducing background workload by 200MB.
In this blog post, Microsoft also reminds us of all the work it’s done to fix Windows 11. From key interface changes like the Start menu and taskbar, to improving Windows Updates, we’ve also witnessed recent changes that make search faster, more accurate and useful (and more efficient with RAM usage).
However, there’s a whole new reveal here in the form of the new Photos app, as mentioned at the beginning.
Microsoft says it rebuilt the native photo editor around WinUI 3 (the modern interface framework for Windows 11) and it now launches 25% faster than before. It has a reorganized set of menus and functions, including repair (removing unwanted objects) and relighting (for quickly adjusting the lighting of a photo).
The photo viewer also starts up faster (about 15% on average, Microsoft claims), opens photos up to 30% faster, and has a cleaner, more streamlined layout, so you can see more of the image.
It also adds a new Gallery that brings together photos on your PC and in the cloud (OneDrive and Apple iCloud). Again, expect faster startup times, more responsive scrolling, and natural language search, so you can request ‘pictures of my dog at the beach’ and Windows will (hopefully) find them.
Analysis: progress in the right direction
Microsoft previously promised to work hard on memory optimization for Windows 11, and it presents clear evidence of that here, which is good to see. However, as I said before, it’s a puzzle why Microsoft hasn’t done this before, and one has to wonder why, for example, widgets were allowed to consume memory if they weren’t being used.
In any case, this is useful progress and there are also a lot of very useful improvements to the Photos app, along with the associated Viewer and Gallery, with impressive performance improvements.
Microsoft is very clear that there will be significant speedups in Windows 11 across the board with the latest operating system update, although we have yet to see any feedback from users who have noticed this. Admittedly, the October update has only been out for a couple of days, so it will be interesting to watch the ongoing reaction.
Overall, this looks like continued progress in the right direction and we can expect more performance tweaks before the end of 2026.
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