Microsoft 365 Companion Apps Fail to Impress

Why do Microsoft 365 Companion Apps Even Exist?

Announced in message center notification MC1160180 (updated 30 September 2025, Microsoft 365 roadmap item 486856), the Microsoft 365 companion apps are a collection of apps designed to live in the Windows toolbar and specialize in a single task. Currently, the suite spans the People, Files, and Calendar companions and starting in October 2025, Microsoft began to install the companion apps automatically on Windows 11 devices that already have the Microsoft 365 desktop client apps.

According to Microsoft, “these lightweight apps integrate seamlessly with Microsoft 365, allowing users to efficiently look up contacts and navigate organization charts, locate files, view calendars and streamline workflows without distractions.” This text seems like a desperate justification for recreating three wheels. Why these apps exist when there are perfectly good other Microsoft 365 apps to do the same job is beyond me. The companion apps complicate an already complex app landscape.

I like to stay current with Windows, so the companion apps showed up earlier this month. Since then, I have struggled to make sense of what they do. The first thing I don’t like about the companion apps is their detachment from the rest of Microsoft 365. Typically, I have Outlook (classic), Teams, the OneDrive sync client, and a bunch of browser apps running (SharePoint sites, admin centers, Planner, and so on). The Microsoft 365 apps share a perfectly good single-sign-on experience, but the companion apps do their own thing and insist on separate authentication. It’s a jarring start.

The Files Companion App

The Files app depends on OneDrive for Business and is able to list cloud files owned or shared by the signed-in user (sounds a lot like the OneDrive browser client). You can view and share files or open the location where a file is stored. The single party trick I found was relatively fast searching. In Figure 1, I searched for Exchange Online and the app responded with alacrity.

But the big question is whether the Files app does enough to warrant keeping it around. After all, Microsoft 365 users have SharePoint search or the OneDrive for Business app, or if they have Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft 365 Copilot Search. The latter is the best way that I have found to search or information, especially when it’s linked via a Copilot connector to important external websites.

The People Companion App

The People app is a way of browsing your Outlook contacts and the Entra ID directory with details of a contact presented through the Microsoft 365 user profile card (Figure 2). Once again, I wonder why I should use a separate app instead of Outlook. Or OWA? Or the new Outlook?

The Calendar Companion App

The Calendar app doesn’t even rate a screen shot. It’s a calendar app without the ability to create a new event or meeting. Opening the Outlook calendar in a new window gives access to more information and more capabilities.

Suppressing the Companion Apps

It didn’t take long to decide that the companion apps were toolbar clutter that I could live without. Tenant administrators can stop Microsoft 365 installing the apps by updating the companion apps setting in the Modern Apps settings tab of Deployment configurations in the Microsoft 365 apps admin center. By default, the setting is checked. Unchecking it stops the installation on workstations (Figure 3).

If the companion apps have already reached PCs, some PowerShell can clean things up by blocking the startup state for the companion apps in the system registry to stop the apps showing up in the toolbar. This code checks the registry to find the startup state for each app (0 = enabled, 1 = disabled) and disables the state for the three apps.

# Disable the People, Files, and Calendar Microsoft 365 Companion Apps from starting automatically
$RegistryKey = "HKCU:\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AppModel\SystemAppData\Microsoft.M365Companions_8wekyb3d8bbwe"
[array]$AppStartUpIds = @("$RegistryKey\CalendarStartupId","$RegistryKey\FilesStartupId","$RegistryKey\PeopleStartupId")

ForEach ($AppStartupId in $AppStartUpIds) {
    Try {
        If (Test-Path $AppStartupId) {
            # Disable startup state for the app
            Write-Host ("Disabling startup state for the {0} companion app" -f $AppStartupId.Split("StartupId")[0].Split("\")[11]) -ForegroundColor Green
            Set-ItemProperty -Path $AppStartupId -Name "State" -Value 1 -Type DWORD -ErrorAction Stop
        } Else {
            Write-Host ("Couldn't find path to disable startup for the {0} companion app" -f $AppStartupId.Split("StartupId")[0].Split("\")[11]) -ForegroundColor Red
        }
    } Catch {
        Write-Error ("Failed to set State for {0} : {1}" -f $AppStartupId, $_)  
    }
}
Write-Host "Completed suppressing the startup of the Calendar, Files, and People companion apps"

The apps are still present on the PC and can be started if the user wants to check them out.

Dump the Apps and Unclutter Your PC

I have no idea how long Microsoft will persist with the notion that these companion apps will improve the lives of Microsoft 365 users. The apps do nothing to keep me focused, streamlined, or any of the other fine words used as justification in MC1160180. But make your own mind up – and then dump the apps before Microsoft comes to their senses and cuts the apps in an effort to save engineering expenses.

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