Upcoming changes to the Azure AD sign-in experience

[Alex Simons (AZURE)]

Howdy folks,

I’m excited to announce that a visual design update is coming to the Azure AD and Microsoft 365 sign-in experience in April. The freshened default background image on our sign-in screens will be one percent the size of the previous image—reducing bandwidth requirements and improving  perceived page load times, especially on slower networks.

This is solely a visual user interface (UI) change with no changes to functionality and only affects screens where our default background image (screenshot on the left) shows up today. If you’ve configured a custom background image in Company Branding for your tenant there is no change to your users. However, if this change affects your users, we recommend updating any documentation that contains screenshots and to give your help desk a heads up.

We plan on rolling this out globally in the first week of April. We always love to hear your feedback and suggestions and look forward to hearing from you! Let us know what you think in the comments below.  

Best regards,

Alex Simons (@Alex_A_Simons)

Corporate VP of Program Management

Microsoft Identity Division

[Eric Marsi]

It would be awesome to have the website have an interpreted theme type where if the Browser (PC and android) are in dark mode, the background has a darker overlay than the white. Dark theme is a amazing IMO and this just hurts the eyes.

[HotCakeX]

Love the Acrylic/Transparent background. now it's more consistent with the rest of the Microsoft design (Windows 10, Microsoft Launcher, UWP apps etc)

[EpicWolverine]

Is there a way to set the frosted effect to dark mode? I can see that blinding me at night. It’d be even better if it could change automatically based on browser settings. It looks nice and clean otherwise. 

[thommck-on-twitter]

Glad we are getting some advanced notice this time. Is this going to show up in the o365/azure message center too? 

The phrase "perceived page load times" is amusing. Still, any optimisation on bandwidth is a great improvement.

I like how it's secretly a subtle Microsoft logo too ☺ 

[AaronMSFT]

Can we make a "Dark Mode" version of the new screen, and either have it obey the O/S setting, or just make "Dark Mode" the default?

[Nzdudeinsydney]

Some smart advice I just saw:

Customize that background with your firm's logo.  Instruct your users to expect it and not log in unless they see the firm logo.

Is that something you're making easy to do/enforce at a tenant level?

[john_pattison]

@Nzdudeinsydney - I could be wrong, but believe it's only once you enter your sign-in details and Azure figures out your tenant and it's company logo settings, the background will then change to those tenant settings. But at the point of just having the sign-in screen appear, it knows nothing about you so has to display a generic background.

[Appanator]

Can you make "real" improvements to the software and not waste everyone's time with new backgrounds?

[wroot]

Personally i would prefer a one tone bg image instead of replicating colors of MS logo, which just looks old. Your logo is not pretty to be a whole bg :) And you already have logo in the dialog itself and in the favicon. Would like it being light bluish (and dark grayish in dark mode).

[Alexey Goncharov]

I’m fully supportive of new update as it improves end-user experience especially on mobile devices with limited network bandwidth. It would be great to have a theme for dark mode not only for browsers (Windows, Mac OS, Android, iOS and iPadOS) as well as for Office 365 apps which support a dark mode, such as Outlook, Teams, OneNote etc.

[plillevold]

I'll join the choir: dark mode would be preferable. Compared to the original, which I think is nice and dark, the new background is blinding. 

[HotCakeX]

@plillevoldDark mode but retain the Acrylic style

[James Russell]

@john_pattison you can actually create shortcuts dedicated to your tenant using the whr parameter e.g. portal.office.com/?whr=example.com. Using this link will always give your domain specific customisations. I have this set on a url rewrite so staff are told to visit office.example.com which is then redirected to portal.office.com/?whr=example.com and then on to what ms do with the login. It works well. 

[Kelvin Xia]

Thanks for the great feedback everyone! Dark mode support is definitely on our backlog. Stay tuned for updates in this area.