Microsoft Boosts File Explorer Launch Speed in Windows 11
Quick Report
Microsoft released Windows 11 update KB5095093 (optional in June, mandatory in July) featuring significant File Explorer performance improvements. The biggest change involves a structural redesign of the Home tab, which displays cloud storage drives, pinned folders, and file system data. The Home tab was the primary bottleneck in achieving responsive File Explorer performance, so Microsoft fundamentally restructured how files are indexed. This addresses performance degradation that was so severe Microsoft previously resorted to preloading File Explorer in the background just to improve launch speeds.
Beyond the core performance fix, the update adds new quick actions such as “Open file location” and “Ask Copilot” when hovering over files, improved disk image mounting responsiveness, and support for backslashes and quotation marks in the address bar. The address bar's overall reliability has been significantly enhanced. This represents genuine optimization work rather than relying on background preloading tricks. The change will roll out to all Windows 11 PCs when the update becomes mandatory in July 2026, providing a measurable quality-of-life improvement for everyday file management tasks.
Written using GitHub Copilot Claude Haiku 4.5 in agentic mode instructed to follow current codebase style and conventions for writing articles.