It was only some years in the past — in 2021 — that Home windows 11 gained official help for Android apps because of a Microsoft-maintained VM known as the Home windows Subsystem for Android (WSA). With the WSA, Home windows 11 customers might set up and run practically the total vary of apps for Android, optionally by way of Amazon’s Android market — the Amazon Appstore — because of an Amazon-Microsoft deal.
Now Home windows 11 is dropping official Android app help — and entry to the Amazon Appstore together with it.
Microsoft right this moment announced that it plans to cease sustaining the WSA inside the yr. Home windows 11 customers who’ve put in the Amazon Appstore or Android apps will proceed to have entry to these apps by way of March 5, 2025 — however not after. And beginning tomorrow, Amazon plans to stop new customers from downloading the Amazon Appstore from the Microsoft Retailer, Microsoft’s app retailer for Home windows.
Picture Credit: Microsoft
“Customers may continue using Amazon Appstore apps that they previously installed and will still be able to receive app updates [after March 6],” Amazon wrote in a weblog put up published right this moment. “Developers will no longer be able to submit net new apps targeting Windows 11 after March 5, 2024, but developers with an existing app can continue to submit app updates until Amazon Appstore on Windows 11 is fully discontinued.”
As Ars Technica’s Andrew Cunningham notes, the WSA, whereas a handy option to run Android apps on Home windows, was restricted from the beginning because of its incapability to entry the Google Play Retailer, the official Android app retailer — at the least not with out workarounds. The Amazon Appstore had a smaller choice, probably driving customers in lots of circumstances to native Home windows or web-based variations of apps they might’ve put in by way of the WSA.
In different phrases, WSA utilization was in all probability fairly low — at a time when Microsoft’s consideration may be very clearly elsewhere, similar to on generative AI and its varied incarnations in Home windows.
Now, simply because Microsoft is ending help for the WSA doesn’t imply it’ll turn out to be unimaginable to run Android apps on Home windows. Quite a few third-party options exist, together with Waydroid, which supplies help for Android apps through Linux-based system containers, and BlueStacks, an Android emulator for Home windows and macOS.
And Microsoft’s dedication to bridging the hole between Android and Home windows units doesn’t seem like wavering.
Simply this week, Microsoft launched a characteristic that permits Android customers to make use of their system’s digicam as a webcam on Home windows 11. Elsewhere, Microsoft maintains apps like Hyperlink to Home windows, which lets Android (and iOS) customers make and take calls, reply to texts and verify and dismiss notifications from a Home windows PC.
