Confirming the leaks of a mini social media platform, Microsoft announced a new feature called Photo Story for OneDrive – to let users share photos to a home-feed-like tab and invite select people to view and interact with them.
This is now available in the OneDrive Beta v6.50, in Australians initially. All the OneDrive basic, standalone, Microsoft 365 personal and family users are eligible to try this feature, but not the corporates and schools yet.
Photo Story in OneDrive
Earlier this year, the XDA team spotted a new feature called Photo Story in an apk teardown session of OneDrive v6.49 Beta 1. Though they didn’t find what this feature is about, a later beta update to the app v6.50 highlighted what it could do.
As per it, OneDrive’s new Photo Story is “a new, interactive feature that securely connects your favorite memories to the people who matter the most.” Microsoft further noted that it’s an invitation-only program, where users should invite people to interact with their home feed.
The feed is more like a mini social media scroll, having support for notifications, comments, and reactions to the shared photos. This is currently available to the OneDrive Beta users in Australia, using apps for Android and iOS, and the web version.
While we wait for more regions to be added later, Microsoft noted that Photo Story is not available to OneDrive work or school accounts, but for OneDrive Basic 5GB (free), OneDrive Standalone 100GB, Microsoft 365 Personal, and Microsoft 365 family accounts.
If you’re interested and eligible, download the OneDrive mobile app and sign up for a personal OneDrive account to start with. Once you’re in, go to the Shared tab to create your first photo story, and invite friends and family to interact with your feed.