Windows 11 update boosts responsiveness by up to 20%, Microsoft says

Microsoft says Windows 11 is up to 20% more responsive following its latest October update, with the gains measured across search, the right-click menu, Settings, the Start menu, File Explorer and the Snipping Tool.

The company also says Windows can now hold up to 2GB more active data in memory instead of moving it to slower storage, an improvement aimed at PCs with 8GB of memory. Background RAM use falls by 200 MB because widgets load only when they are opened on machines with 8GB of memory or less.

A rebuilt Photos app

The Photos app has been rebuilt on WinUI 3 and launches 25% faster than before, while the photo viewer opens about 15% faster on average and opens individual photos up to 30% faster.

A new Gallery combines photos stored on the PC with those held in the cloud through OneDrive and Apple iCloud, and supports natural-language search.

According to techradar.com, the performance improvements were tested in the September preview update before shipping in the October update; at the beginning of 2026, Windows 11 performance stood at the baseline Microsoft compared the new figures against. Microsoft had previously promised to work hard on memory optimisation for Windows 11.