You might be familiar with “stories” from Instagram and other social media apps. The popular feature lets you share your favorite moments and memories, and then they disappear after a full day. Well, it turns out that Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud storage service is getting something similar, but not in the way you think.
According to Microsoft’s Catherine Feldman, OneDrive’s now-in-testing photo stories feature is designed to help you connect your favorite moments and memories with those who are close to you in life. Unlike Instagram stories, though, OneDrive photo stories give you a private invite-only feed. This feed is a place to share photos from OneDrive with family and friends, and have them comment, react, and like them.
You’ll even get notifications about stories to help you have meaningful interactions. Yet there is no way to search for people or accounts to find a photo story, as it is all invite-only, and through OneDrive. The feature is designed to be a bonus part of OneDrive and a Microsoft Account.
“With OneDrive photo story, you can deepen your personal connections and tight-knit communities without compromising your privacy or personal data,” explained Feldman.
At the moment, the OneDrive photo story feature is only in preview as part of beta in Australia on the OneDrive apps on Android and iOS, as well as OneDrive on the web. Microsoft is planning to roll out the feature later this year in the U.S. The company mentioned that it wants to listen to customer feedback and develop and improve on the feature first.
Once this is available for you, it will be under the Shared tab in OneDrive. On browsers, meanwhile, you can select the Shared tab from the left navigation bar. You can then choose Create post and pick the photos you want to share, add a description, and post the story. Note that anyone who wants to follow you or view your story will need to have a Microsoft account. They won’t need to be a Microsoft 365 subscriber, and you can share out story links manually with anyone. A full support page explains how the OneDrive photo story works.