Apple and Microsoft teamed up to create an iCloud Drive experience that will hopefully resolve some compatibility issues. A brand new iCloud for Windows app is available today in the Microsoft Store for Windows 10 users. The iCloud app will use the same technology as Microsoft’s OneDrive’s On-Demand feature a very rare collaboration from tech’s two biggest rivals. Users can now easily access photos, videos, mail, calendars, files and other information from their iCloud accounts from their PC or smartphone.
The new app lets Windows 10 users access their calendar, mail, photos, videos, and other files on a Windows 10 PC. You can even sync browser bookmarks… which is particularly interesting since Apple stopped offering a Safari web browser for Windows some time ago. So this new app allows you to sync your Chrome, Firefox, or Internet Explorer bookmarks from your PC with Safari running on your iOS or macOS devices.
You can use the app to add an iCloud Drive section to the Windows File Explorer, allowing you to drag and drop files between your PC and the cloud.
You can also select files and folders you want to keep on your PC or save space on your computer by only keeping some files in iCloud. And you can share files with other users from the Windows File Explorer.
Microsoft says the new app uses the same files on-demand feature as its own OneDrive cloud storage app for Windows 10.
The iCloud for Windows app can also automatically download new photos and videos from iCloud to your PC, which makes it easy to access pictures you take on an iPhone from your PC. And you can create shared albums on a PC.
In order to use the mail, contacts, and calendars features you’ll need Outlook 2016 or later. But everything else should be accessible to iCloud and Windows users without any additional software.
