A “simpler, easier” Microsoft Account login page coming for “lots” of services

If you try to sign in to your Microsoft account on the web today, you may see that Microsoft is currently testing a new account login page with a nice background image. As of today, it seems that the redesigned page can only be seen by some users, and in our own testing we only saw it when trying to sign in on select online services such as Bing, Outlook.com, OneDrive.com and the Microsoft Store.

The new page was spotted by Twitter user Rob Jansen, who got an answer from Microsoft’s Chief Marketing Officer Chris Caposella confirming that it’s a “simpler and hopefully easier” experience coming to lots of Microsoft services (via MSPoweruser)

Yup. That's a new login lots of our services will be using… Simpler and hopefully easier.

— Chris Capossela (@chriscapossela) July 20, 2017

The new login page does look a bit more modern compared to the previous bland page, but there is an important detail you should be aware of: there is now just one field to fill your email, phone number or Skype ID, and the field to fill your password is now on a separate screen. “We’ve tested it a lot and it seems like the cognitive load of two items on one page is higher than two pages with one item on each,” explained Capossela in another tweet.

You’ll have to fill your password on a separate screen.

After validating your your email, you’ll still see the option to sign in by using Microsoft’s excellent Authenticator app, assuming you already set up two-factor authentication on your account (you really should!). Let us know your thoughts about this new login page in the comments below.