Every day, millions of people rely on OneDrive and SharePoint to share documents, pictures, and countless other kinds of digital content. We've listened to your feedback and worked to create a refreshed experience to help you be even more productive. Today we're proud to announce a new experience across web and mobile that makes finding what’s important to you easier, while keeping you better up to date with what is going on with your files. You will see all these changes hit your device and browser before the end of the year.

A laptop, a phone and a tablet showing OneDrive and SharePoint's new design for list and tiles.

Refreshed Design

Find your files faster with the new design for files & folders

The new layout uses your screen space more efficiently, and the uncluttered text styles make it easier to scan across file names and notice essential information quicker. New files jump out at you. Shared files are now easier to spot, and we’ve made thumbnails larger and more detailed. Why? Because OneDrive and SharePoint are alive, active and ever-changing. New files come in, others change, some get shared out. We heard from you that these changes needed to be more apparent, and we combined that knowledge with research about how the human eye parses items. The human eye is attuned to recognize familiar shapes and colors instantly. To take advantage of this, we modified the look of the files and folders in the list and tile views so it’s easier to find what you’re looking for.

A diagram illustrates the different layers of shapes and gradients that make up our new folder and file icon design.

Cohesive theme and design across apps

Familiarity builds trust. As you move between devices from one moment to the next, thoughtful design decisions help remove friction and accelerate your day. To that end, we're refreshing the files experience across Android, iOS, Universal Windows Platform (UWP) and the web interfaces in OneDrive and SharePoint. Our bright and legible color palette is more harmonious with the Office 365 suite apps you rely on. So, whatever your working style, your content always feels right at home.

Preview files without opening them

When you store files in OneDrive, you can count on our rich viewer support for over 270 file types: Visio, Adobe formats like Photoshop, PDF and Illustrator, RAW, 3D and high-precision DICOM medical imagery to name just a few. Our preview-generation engine creates crisp thumbnails and large previews with incredible speed, and they look especially gorgeous on 4K and Hi-DPI displays like the Microsoft Surface Pro. These previews will make you more productive and find your files faster when you're using OneDrive.

To support changing trends and the latest apps you use, we've also completely re-worked our file icons to be modern and lightweight while keeping them familiar and recognizable. Our support for the latest high-resolution devices extends to these icons as well: we've generated over 4200 variations and sizes of icons to ensure your files look crisp on any device.

A diagram illustrates the alignment of visual elements that make up the design of all file type icons, and a selection of various icons used for different kinds of files.

New list flexibility and compact mode — We know efficiency matters to you, and sometimes it's the smallest details that can give you an edge. One of the frequent asks from some of our power users was a "high density list view" resembling Windows File Explorer. Today we're announcing a new compact list that packs more items into folder views across OneDrive and document libraries with an even more uncluttered layout, so you can handle thousands of items with ease.

Our regular and compact list design now lets you adjust column widths to flex to your data and your working style, which is especially handy for high-performance SharePoint solutions with custom file views and metadata.

A side-by-side comparison of the normal files list and the new compact list, showing how it shows you more items.

Smarter Connections

A closeup of some items in the OneDrive Recent view shows indicators that help you find popular or freshly created files.

Stay informed on what's popular — The cloud-powered Office graph gives you insight into how your contributions make an impact across your organization. Popular files show a trending indicator, so you no longer have to dig around to see what's hot and where you're influential.

Quickly locate new files — Quickly find that colleague's contributions with our "New Item Indicator", which is a small gleam that looks like eyelashes above files and folders. This makes items created within the last day easy to spot as you scroll through lists, tiles or the new OneDrive Recent view. This is especially useful in shared spaces like SharePoint team sites, where you can quickly catch up with the latest contributions.

File card reveals essential item metadata and insights — You want to understand the history, impact, influencers & collaborators around every file you share. The file card is a new way to peek into who has viewed your file and when. This unique capability, when coupled with our instant previewers and deep version history, lets you know more about what's happening with your files when you store them in OneDrive or SharePoint.

Powerful Recent Files view updates across OneDrive and Office — Just as Rome was not built in a day, neither are most documents. The updated Recent view in OneDrive, Office.com and the Office apps is more accurate and capable than ever, ensuring your content is consistent, familiar, and easy to find across all these places. All the utility and visual improvements listed above regarding icons, layout and signals are part of this experience. With OneDrive and Office, it's now even easier than ever to pick up where you left off.

An image of OneDrive's Recent Files view, Office.com's Recent View and the same functionality as it appears in the PowerPoint app for Windows.

Accessibility top of mind — We are committed to building for each and every one of our customers. The new list and tiles experience across OneDrive and SharePoint were built from the ground up with ease of use and accessibility in mind, compatible with narration and assistive devices and following the Microsoft Accessibility Standard.

We’ll be rolling out and refining this design across web, Windows, iOS and Android in the coming weeks, and we hope you find it every bit as useful and effortless to use as we do. Let us know what you think in UserVoice or the comments below.

— Laura Shih & Carlos Pérez

File Coherence Team

Please note: Pinning in recent view, file cards and trending information are not supported in the consumer edition at this time. Support for DICOM previews requires an Office 365 Business subscription.