Microsoft accidentally gave Windows 11 users another OneDrive app, and you can’t easily remove it

Windows 11 users have been getting a new OneDrive app whether they asked for it or not. The problem? Microsoft says it wasn’t supposed to happen. Microsoft has confirmed that its OneDrive Photos app was rolled out to Windows 11 PCs more broadly than intended, including enterprise machines where the app isn’t even designed to work. The company says it is now working on a fix, but there’s an awkward catch: users currently can’t uninstall OneDrive Photos without removing the main OneDrive app too.

So, what exactly got installed?

OneDrive Photos isn’t an entirely new product. Microsoft first introduced the app to Windows Insiders earlier this year, and it’s still in beta. Starting August 1, however, the app began appearing on consumer PCs and eventually reached many systems with the OneDrive sync client installed.

The app essentially brings the OneDrive web and mobile photo experience to the Windows desktop. It can display photos stored locally on the PC as well as images in OneDrive, while offering features such as search, albums, Favorites and Microsoft’s Moments feature. It is built using Microsoft Edge’s WebView2, meaning much of the experience is essentially a web app running on the desktop.

And here’s the slightly uncomfortable bit: Windows Latest found that the app can have access to photos across the PC even when the user hasn’t signed into a Microsoft account. Users can also prevent OneDrive from scanning specific locations.

The rollout became particularly awkward after OneDrive Photos also appeared on Windows 11 Enterprise PCs managed through Microsoft Intune, even though the app is designed for personal Microsoft accounts. Microsoft has acknowledged the mistake, telling Windows Latest that its new OneDrive Photos experience was rolled out more broadly than intended and that it is working on a fix. The situation is even stranger because the app isn’t distributed as a standalone MSI; instead, the existing OneDrive sync client can download and install it in the background.

And no, you can’t simply uninstall it

This is where things get frustrating for anyone who doesn’t want the new app. Because OneDrive Photos is tied to the main OneDrive sync client, Windows 11 doesn’t currently offer a separate uninstall option. The only straightforward way to get rid of OneDrive Photos right now is to uninstall OneDrive itself from Settings > Apps > Installed apps, then restart the PC.

That’s obviously not ideal for anyone who actually uses OneDrive for syncing files. Removing the main client can also affect its File Explorer integration and shortcuts, meaning users have little reason to uninstall an application they may still rely on simply to get rid of the unwanted Photos component.

Microsoft says this will change. The company is working on controls that will let users remove OneDrive Photos separately from the main OneDrive app. On enterprise PCs managed through Intune, Microsoft says the app will automatically disappear where it isn’t supported. Nonetheless, the whole episode highlights an increasingly familiar Windows frustration: even when Microsoft gets around to making an app genuinely useful, users probably shouldn’t have to discover it because Windows installed it for them first