Remote work today means much more than just connecting to a meeting from your home office or sending a few emails from your phone. The tools that support remote work need to be flexible, secure, and help us work and live smarter—and that means having all our apps and files at our fingertips, whenever and wherever we want.
The Surface team at Microsoft has been hard at work building versatile devices that meet those very needs. The new Surface Duo is designed to revolutionize the way we work. Featuring two screens that are connected by a revolutionary 360-degree hinge, Surface Duo brings together the best of Microsoft 365 together with Android apps to strike the perfect balance of productivity and mobility in a single device.
The OneDrive app is a critical component of Surface Duo and is fully integrated into the Surface Duo operating system to ensure you stay connected to your files while making the most of the dual-screen and spanning capabilities. What’s more, you can manage all your multiple accounts from OneDrive—so you can use your device to switch between personal, professional, and school accounts.
Ready to reimagine productivity on the go? Take a closer look at how OneDrive delivers superior user experiences in the new Surface Duo.
Dual-screen display for anytime, anywhere access to files
With the OneDrive app for Surface Duo, you’ll have all your files at your fingertips so you can create, edit, collaborate, share, delete, and even recover files directly from your device. You can also mark files and folders for offline access and work on them whenever and wherever you need. So, if you are on a flight without internet access and need to read that financial report or a bunch of marketing research on your Surface Duo, you’re covered—just select the files for offline access and you’ll be good to go.
Because the OneDrive app was tailormade for Surface Duo, the display adjusts automatically according to your actions. With the dual screens, you can swiftly scroll through the OneDrive file browser on the left screen to select a file, and simultaneously view a preview of the file’s contents on the right screen.
On-the-go collaboration that drives teamwork
Need to collaborate on a sales report while travelling for work? Collaboration is the cornerstone of remote productivity, and OneDrive for Surface Duo was designed to enable fluid teamwork from anywhere.
Using OneDrive, you can securely share files with colleagues or vendors outside of your organization directly, via email or a chat in Microsoft Teams. You can also edit and coauthor documents and other files in real time with your peers—it’s easy to grab their attention by adding comments to the files with @mentions.
Note: To edit and co-auth, simply use the Office apps on Surface Duo; the file remains in OneDrive so you are working with others on the single source of truth.
And on your way back from that work trip, don’t forget to use OneDrive on your Surface Duo to share photos with your family and friends.
Easier multitasking with drag-and-drop functionality
The dual-screen layout of OneDrive in Surface Duo elevates the user experience for multitasking on the go. With drag-and-drop capabilities, you can quickly move files and folders within OneDrive. Or take advantage of the dual screens to open another app alongside OneDrive to drag files where they’re needed.
Perhaps the most striking scenario is the ability to drag files from OneDrive into an Outlook email message to add as an attachment. You can also move files in the other direction—just drag the attachment from Outlook to OneDrive. This functionality extends to other apps as well, enabling remote collaboration as users move files from a OneDrive folder to a shared library in SharePoint or a chat in Microsoft Teams.
Book-like reading experiences—and a PDF editor with intuitive markup
A major “wow” factor of the OneDrive app for Surface Duo is Book mode, which allows you to read files (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF) across both screens of the foldable device. Every time you swipe left, the page turns just like a book—delivering a seamless and familiar experience for reading textbooks, e-books, or long documents.
The screen for the Surface Duo adjusts whenever you rotate the device, so whether it’s in landscape mode or portrait mode, your reading experience will remain consistent.
Another enhancement is the ability to annotate a PDF file with highlights or notes. With OneDrive, you can take advantage of the built-in PDF editor that’s designed around quick actions, leading to a truly mobile-first markup experience. Markup is intuitive and touch-friendly with pens, highlighters, and an eraser—all found at the bottom of the screen. You can also connect the Surface Pen to the device and configure shortcuts for it in the Connect Devices menu. Whether you use a Surface Pen or your fingertip, you can save, sign, and share legal documents directly from the Surface Duo.
A modern approach to saving, digitizing, and sharing photos and media
Saving and sharing images while on the go is a snap with the OneDrive app for Surface Duo. Thanks to its deep integration with the Surface Duo operating system, OneDrive makes it easy for you to store photos, videos, and any business-critical media directly in the cloud. By simply turning on the camera upload in OneDrive, your content will be automatically backed up, ensuring it stays protected and available from anywhere.
Similar to the functionality for documents, sorting and viewing photos in OneDrive is unique to the dual-screen Surface Duo. Because OneDrive spans both screens, you can scroll through your photo library on the left display while viewing selected images on the right display. Once you’ve selected the image or media file, you can choose share them with your friends, family and colleagues from anywhere and anytime.
The popular “On this day” feature in OneDrive for Android has also been extended to Surface Duo. The app highlights photos taken on that specific day in past years, so you can take a stroll down memory lane and relive some of your treasured moments on your Surface Duo.
Finally, you can digitize content using the built-in scanning functionality in OneDrive. With this feature, you can easily scan documents, whiteboard notes, receipts, or even photographs, and then convert them into easy-to-share PDF files. You can also scan sensitive documents like tax filings or copies of your passport directly into your Personal Vault, a protected area of OneDrive that safeguards files behind an extra layer of identity verification—without sacrificing the convenience of anywhere access.
To learn more about Surface Duo check out the technical documentation and support articles .
Thank you for your time ,
Ankita Kirti