Apple Redesigns iCloud App for Windows

[MacRumors]

Apple this week rolled out its redesigned iCloud app for Windows, touting a range of new features and improvements to enhance the user experience (via TechCrunch).

The latest update to the iCloud for Windows app brings an all-new design, an easier-to-use onboarding and setup process, syncing status, support for physical security keys for Apple ID sign-in, photos syncing performance improvements, fewer sign-in prompts, and fixes for problems with contacts and calendar syncing with Outlook.

The iCloud for Windows app is available to download from the Microsoft app store for free on Windows 10 and Windows 11. Existing users simply need to update the app to obtain the new design and improvements.

Yesterday, Apple launched individual Apple Music, Apple TV, and Apple Devices apps for Windows machines. The new apps are intended to replace functionality previously only offered iTunes, but the original app is still required to access podcasts and audiobooks.

Article Link: Apple Redesigns iCloud App for Windows

 

[clayj]

Excellent news. Hopefully this new version is more stable than the old version. On two separate occasions, the old version wigged out on my laptop and resulted in my Apple ID password having to be changed -- a process that takes more than an hour to complete across all of my devices.

 

[stefanovago]

The old version never worked properly. Let’s see how this one works.

 

[krspkbl]

Not hard to improve it because it was so ****. If I can actually use iCloud Drive now then I will be so happy. I am paying for iCloud storage and Google drive storage. I'd rather not have to pay for two cloud storage services. If it works then I will give Apple more money to increase the storage. Let's see if they finally did a good job.

 

[Truckondo]

Maybe it fixes my password plugin for Edge. I haven’t been able to use it for the past couple months.

 

[TruthWatcher412]

I can never get my bookmarks to sync, hopefully this fixes it but not holding my breath

 

[krspkbl]

downloaded it and everything synced up straight away like it should. uploaded files from my PC is super quick too. well done apple... took you long enough to figure it out lol.

i guess i'll raise my iCloud storage to 200GB now then 👏👏👏

 

[decafjava]

Ahh good news, not keen to install it on my Win 11 Lenovo work laptop (it's my personal stuff) but glad it seems to work better.

 

[coffeemilktea]

This is great news, I'm so glad I can properly use iCloud on my Windows PC also.

 

[spooned12000rpm]

Don't get too excited, I've already run into the age old bug of iCloud creating duplicate calendar entries in Outlook when going offline then reconnecting (the duplicate can then only be deleted by signing out of iCloud and deleting data then re-signing back in).

 

[kirky29]

How do iCloud photos in the photo library app work? Or is it just a glorified web app?

 

[InnocenceMyth]

Excellent news. Hopefully this new version is more stable than the old version. On two separate occasions, the old version wigged out on my laptop and resulted in my Apple ID password having to be changed -- a process that takes more than an hour to complete across all of my devices.

Nope. New version made me log in again, which I did correctly, but then when I verified on another device my account was locked and then a password change required, which of course has to be entered on all devices. What a pain.

 

[LightProtector]

I wonder how this will work with AltStore.

 

[RedWeasel]

Does it still take a couple of months to sync a ~ 100 GB Apple Photos library?

 

[GeoStructural]

I wish Apple had an intermediate storage tier, jumping from 200 GB to 2 TB is very inconvenient for the user (fantastic for Apple, of course, $$$).

 

[SirOmega]

Will it finally support shared folders? I am on a mac, and have a folder shared with my wife, who uses W11. The only way for her to access the shared iCloud folder is to open up the email that it generated when I originally shared it and click the link to open it in a browser.

We both miss Dropbox where you just had a "Shared with me" folder and all the folders other people shared with you were in that folder.

 

[GeoStructural]

Will it finally support shared folders? I am on a mac, and have a folder shared with my wife, who uses W11. The only way for her to access the shared iCloud folder is to open up the email that it generated when I originally shared it and click the link to open it in a browser.

We both miss Dropbox where you just had a "Shared with me" folder and all the folders other people shared with you were in that folder.

Yes, it is incredible such simple features are still missing. I still remember when drag-and-drop was not supported, Apple has really been slow and poor when it comes to services.

 

[SirOmega]

Yeah, we also have O365 for families and would like to use the 1TB of file storage (especially because we're almost out of space at 200GB of iCloud storage) but the OneDrive app for Mac is absolutely the worst application I have ever seen. We tried to migrate and I went back to iCloud in less than a week.

 

[AppleTO]

I've never found iCloud for Windows to work very reliably. It often just wouldn't sync drive changes or update bookmarks without being shutdown and restarted. Hopefully they've fixed these issues.

 

[Sorinut]

How do iCloud photos in the photo library app work? Or is it just a glorified web app?

It just dumps everything in a giant folder.

 

[travisjunky]

I currently have both OneDrive for Windows and iCloud storage up to 2 TB. I’m actually looking to drop one drive and use iCloud exclusively as my cloud storage solution. I recently used the updated Windows version of iCloud and noticed it was different, but I thought they had just updated it overtime since it had been so long since I used it. I’ve not tested every feature but I have noticed that passwords works much better and I have had no issues using it in Edge browser. Still remains to be seen if other features will work as intended or if I like apples implementation of Windows cloud storage.

 

[PilotC150]

Horrible timing on this. Well, horrible for me, good for Apple.

I literally bought a Mac Mini a couple months ago because of how bad iCloud for Windows is. My wife has ~200,000 photos on her iPhone and we didn't want them living entirely (and only) in iCloud. I wanted to sync them to my Windows computer, and then have them backed up to my cloud backup provider. But iCloud for Windows never actually downloaded the originals for all the photos even after weeks (and months) of letting it keep trying.

So, I bought a Mac Mini, whose sole purpose is to backup my wife's photos, which will then backup to a separate cloud backup provider.

 

[thogin]

Still no support for Apple Keychain in Firefox. I wanted to try it out.

I agree with a previous comment about iCloud storage. Would be nice if there were a 500GB $4.99 tier.

 

[chrono1081]

PWA's are garbage anyway and are only touted by web developers who want to make a mobile "app" without actually learning anything new.

 

[krspkbl]

as i said previously it has improved a lot but the more i've used it i don't think i'll bother. still some syncing issues and lacking features compared to google drive. maybe in another 10 years they'll get it right.