Microsoft will start preloading Explorer because it’s so slow

With all the problems Windows is facing, I think one area where Microsoft can make some easy, quick gains is by drastically improving Explorer, Windows’ file manager. It seems that in the latest developer releases, they’re doing just that. The most impactful change – possibly – is that Microsoft is going to preload Explorer.

We’re exploring preloading File Explorer in the background to help improve File Explorer launch performance. This shouldn’t be visible to you, outside of File Explorer hopefully launching faster when you need to use it. If you have the change, if needed there is an option you can uncheck to disable this called “Enable window preloading for faster launch times” in File Explorer’s Folder Options, under View.
↫ Windows Insider Program Team

Microsoft is also reordering the context menu in Explorer, and while this may seem like a small set of changes, the new context menu does look much tidier and less busy. They achieve this by moving a few top-level items to a submenu, and reordering some other elements. Sadly, the context menu still retains its own context menu (“Show more options”), which is a traditional Win32 menu – which I still think is one of the most Windows of Windows things of all time.

Regardless, I hope these small changes make Explorer more bearable to use for those of you still using Windows, because we all know you need it.