Copilot on Windows can now work with your local files while you do something else

Today, Microsoft announced several important upgrades for the Copilot app on Windows. It now lets you invoke Copilot with voice, Copilot Vision is now available to all users, and Windows 11's taskbar is getting a dedicated Copilot experience. Additionally, Microsoft is expanding Copilot Actions to local files, a feature that allows Copilot to take action on local files on your behalf.

Copilot Actions is not a new feature per se. Previously, Microsoft released Copilot Actions with the ability to act in your web browser, and now, it is enabling support for local files.

The gist is simple: select a bunch of files and tell Copilot what to do with them. For example, you can select several photos and ask Copilot to straighten them and delete duplicates. You can use natural language to describe your request, and the agent will try to make it for you by interacting with desktop and web apps.

While Copilot is doing what you asked it to do, you can switch to something else or simply watch it doing its job. Microsoft made the experience fully transparent so that you can see how exactly Copilot is using your computer. You can intervene at any moment, review the completed tasks, or stop Copilot. Also, Copilot will ask you for permission before moving to specific parts of your request.

Unlike "Hey Copilot" and Copilot Vision, Copilot Actions is not available right now. Microsoft will release the feature to Windows Insiders in the near future via Copilot Laps with "a narrow set of use cases." Microsoft is approaching this feature carefully, and it wants to optimize the model before expanding available use cases. Microsoft says it needs real-world testing to train Copilot to work with complex user interfaces and teach it to do complex tasks.

Like the rest of the features, Copilot Actions is an opt-in experience that you need to proactively enable before it starts.

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Posted Friday 17 October 2025 at 4:05 am AEST (my time).

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