Microsoft acknowledges Windows 11 File Explorer lag

The slow performance of the Windows 11 File Explorer has been a complaint since the operating system's debut. Microsoft has finally addressed this fundamental shortcoming, though the solution is less an architectural fix and more a clever workaround.

Microsoft (via Windows Central) has officially acknowledged the performance problems and is testing a solution in the latest Windows 11 Insider Preview builds, specifically 26220.7271. The key change is that File Explorer will now be preloaded into memory by default when the system boots or is idle. This keeps the necessary components resident in RAM, drastically reducing the “cold start” latency experienced when the user clicks the taskbar icon.

The company's motivation for this brute-force fix is clear: users often compare the sluggish start to the near-instantaneous file managers found in competing operating systems, with many pointing out that the problem did not exist in Windows 10. The performance degradation is widely attributed to the blending of modern XAML and WinUI components with the older Win32 shell, which supposedly creates unnecessary initialisation overhead.

While the fix should provide a snappy, near-instant launch, it has been met with skepticism, as some argue it masks the root cause of the inefficiency in how File Explorer was programmed. For users concerned about the permanent memory footprint, Microsoft has included a user-facing option in File Explorer's Folder Options to disable background preloading. The feature is expected to roll out to all Windows 11 users in a future update next year.

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KitGuru says: Have you ever felt File Explorer was slow? Will you enable this option when your system supports it, or would you prefer to have more free memory?

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