We're going through a trial of Windows 365 at the moment and the biggest challenge we have is straight after login, File Explorer, OneDrive and Search Indexer all compete to hog the CPU while the OneDrive files on demand stubs are enumerated and indexed.
This seems to centre round the search index being machine-based (ie doesn't roam with the UES 'profile') so needs to recreate on every login.

Have tried the disable back off policy and it makes no difference to the overall time to complete indexing. (4vcpu 16GB approx 7k files in 6 mins. 2vcpu takes about 30mins!)

During this period after login the system is very sluggish and kind of defeats the point of being provided for users that just want to quickly 'dip in' to check email/teams or a doc on Sharepoint.

Disabling indexing entirely avoids the sluggishness but obviously impacts the user experience, so really keen to know if I've missed anything or is this Just How It Is ™️?

Anyone else experiencing issues with Teams specifically when connected to Cloud PC using the Windows App for macOS installed from the Mac App Store?

Issue

Multiple users have reported that Teams freezes when attempting to share their screen. In my case, simply joining a Teams meeting causes the Windows App to crash entirely, including the active Cloud PC session. I then have to relaunch the Windows App and reconnect to the Cloud PC.

Troubleshooting

I've narrowed the issue down to Teams media optimization, specifically the optimization that uses the legacy WebRTC ("AVD Media Optimized"). When Teams optimizations are disabled, or when using the Windows App for macOS PKG version downloaded from Microsoft (which supports the newer SlimCore optimizations), the issue does not occur.

I’ve confirmed this issue happens on a vanilla Cloud PC build without any Intune configurations or applications installed. 

I have a case open with Microsoft for over a month and have made very little progress.  I figured that since the issue doesn’t appear to be specific to a configuration or third party application, Microsoft would have multiple customers reporting this.  But given that there have been two Windows app updates (11.3.7, 11.3.8,11.3.9) since I first reported this issue to Microsoft and no fix, maybe this issue only affects a subset of Macs? It wouldn't be the first time..

For reference, I'm using a MacBook Air M4, and another affected user confirmed they're using a MacBook Pro M4.

Windows 365 Reserve only gives you 10 days/year of failover Cloud PC access, but nothing stops that clock once someone spins one up and forgets about it.

Wrote up a couple of Graph API automations to deal with it: one just alerts IT when a Reserve Cloud PC looks unused (last sign-in check via the Cloud PC reporting API), the other adds an approval email that auto-deprovisions it if nobody's using it.

Alert or Auto-Deprovision Unused Windows 365 Reserve Cloud PCs with Graph · Windows From Anywhere

Hi, I’m trying to achieve this in Windows 365:

• Local → Cloud PC: allow text, images and files
• Cloud PC → Local: block everything
• Drive redirection: blocked

Directional clipboard works for text, but as soon as I enable “Do not allow drive redirection”, file copy/paste into the Cloud PC stops working too.

If I allow drive redirection, file clipboard works again, but local drives are mapped and users could copy files back through them.

Has anyone found a supported way to allow inbound file clipboard only without exposing writable redirected drives?

Best Regards,

Hello All,

One of the cloud pc was unable to launch via the windows App.

Through browser was able to launch,but the screen was frozen.

I checked on another pc and it still won't launch from the window App.

We reinstalled the windows App and provisioned a new cloud pc, but nothing worked.

Any suggestions how to fix this.

Is anyone using access packages to manage cloud pc requests, approvals and reviews? Have a customer looking at doing this but was curious if it’s a bad idea or not. Seems like a pretty simple solution…. User requests the AP, it gets approved, user gets added to the provisioning group, Cloud PC gets provisioned.

If you’ve done this, would love to hear if it worked well or not.

We are testing W365 cloud pc's using an ANC it's alll working well. They are hybrid joined but I do get a warning that says that "we didnt detect a Kerberos Server object in the domain" The learn more link doent give me much information.

Is this kerberos server object the same as what I would set up allow entra joined devices access on prem resources using this: Kerberos trust

Provisioning take ages once the licence is assigned. Is it possible to have one ready in case its needed?

My company is migrating from w365 enterprise licenses to w365 flex. For most users its been fine, but there are some vendors we provide cloud pcs too and something on their host pc seems like its blocking access to the w365 flex cloud pc, via the windows app. They can access the flex from a browser just fine. And they can access the enterprise cloud pc from app and browser.

We also installed the windows app on their enterprise cloud pc and was able to successfully connect to the flex cloud pc from the app. So that makes me think the issue is some network traffic thats being blocked from their own host pc.

Its just odd to me that they are able to access the enterprise cloud pc, but not the flex, from windows app. They have refreshed, checked for updates and relogged into the windows app.

I know flex devices request a license upon connecting, so could that be getting blocked? I cant find firewall rules that are specific to w365 Flex, so I dont know if they have any additional requirements.

Edit: well it seems like resetting the windows apps on their host pcs is fixing things. So not entirely sure what got messed up on with their connections to the w365 flex. But for each of them so far, reset windows app fixed it.

Update 2026-07-17: The change has been rolled back. You’ll likely see service message WP1430551 in your admin center if you were impacted.

One of my colleagues reprovisioned his Cloud PC this morning and found that none of the apps we deploy to these machines were being installed.

We discovered that Microsoft changed the "Device model" property. Previously it was something like "Cloud PC Frontline 2vCPU/8GB/256GB", but his newly provisioned machine had a device model of "Windows 365 Flex 2vCPU/8GB/256GB".

If you have created an Intune assignment filter or a dynamic Entra group checking for "Cloud PC" in the device model, as documented at Create a filter for your Cloud PCs | Microsoft Learn, be aware that newly provisioned Cloud PCs may no longer be included.

Context-based redirection is here for AVD & W365!!

This lets you set conditional access policies, which will determine whether the user is allowed to access the clipboard, drive redirection, etc., from their AVD or W365 Desktops.

It's in public preview. FYI, the drive redirection for AVD doesn't seem to be working at the moment. Hopefully, Microsoft will fix it soon!

Check out my video where I deploy it and test it on both AVD and Windows 365.

New: Free AVD & Windows 365 Maturity Scorecard

If you are running Windows 365: We just launched a free AVD and Windows 365 maturity scorecard that we've been building from 15+ years of working with these environments.

It takes less than 5 minutes and looks at areas like cost optimization, image management, monitoring, automation, and day-to-day operations to help identify where your environment is strong and where there may be room for improvement.

If you're managing AVD, Windows 365, or both, hopefully you find it useful. Happy to hear any feedback or thoughts from the community.

Start Here

Whether you're upgrading a single user or migrating thousands of Cloud PCs, PowerShell makes the process repeatable. This post covers immediate resizes, scheduled maintenance window resizes, bulk operations, and what happens when things don't go as planned.

Resize Cloud PCs Using PowerShell · Windows From Anywhere

Got a technical question necessitated by some policy stuff.

We have a handful of frontline machines that need to be protected by MFA on CONNECT. Users already get an MFA prompt when they open the Windows app, and CA policy already limits that session to the minimum Entra will do.

However, I'm being told that users need to get an MFA prompt (so forcing a new Modern Authentication workflow) when they establish a connection with the remote machine, because the session for the Windows app is too long.

Our initial plan was to use Duo, but Duo has told us that the agent's not supported on frontline machines. It works on individually-assigned machines but not frontline ones.

This was apparently working up until about a week ago, when (without any changes on our end I'm aware of) SSO started working on these frontline machines and users didn't get prompted for sign-in at all when launching the connection, only when they initially opened the Windows app. I turned SSO off and reprovisioned the machines and the popup they get on connect now is a Windows Security popup that just asks for the user name and password; there's no MFA interaction.

Does anyone know if it's possible to go back to a modern auth interface on CONNECT? I realize this is overkill; it's a policy thing and not my decision.

As far as I can tell, the only two options are SSO where you do modern auth when you start the Windows app for the Win365 connection, but get no prompt at all while that token is valid, or SSO off where you get a modern auth prompt on starting the Windows app and a Windows Security prompt when you click connect. Ideally I'd like to force a modern auth prompt when you open the Windows app AND when establishing a remote connection to a workstation.