Microsoft To End Its Android Apps on Windows 11 Subsystem in 2025 (theverge.com) 45
Microsoft is ending support for its Android subsystem in Windows 11 next year. From a report: The software giant first announced it was bringing Android apps to Windows 11 with Amazon's Appstore nearly three years ago, but this Windows Subsystem for Android will now be deprecated starting March 5th, 2025. "Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA)," reads a new support document from Microsoft. "As a result, the Amazon Appstore on Windows and all applications and games dependent on WSA will no longer be supported beginning March 5, 2025."
If you currently use Android apps from the Amazon Appstore, then you'll continue to have access to these past the support cutoff date, but you won't be able to download any new ones once Microsoft makes its Android subsystem end of life next year. On March 6th (tomorrow), Windows 11 users will no longer be able to search for Amazon Appstore or associated Android apps from the Microsoft Store.
If you currently use Android apps from the Amazon Appstore, then you'll continue to have access to these past the support cutoff date, but you won't be able to download any new ones once Microsoft makes its Android subsystem end of life next year. On March 6th (tomorrow), Windows 11 users will no longer be able to search for Amazon Appstore or associated Android apps from the Microsoft Store.
Thank goodness! (Score:2)
Give me a native Kindle client! The app store version with the overhead of WSA is terrible from a performance and resource perspective. And the Amazon app store is like a closed down graveyard (it should just present the instructions for setting up Google Play Store).
WSL is another story altogether though. Fantastic stuff there (fully integrated python debugging in Linux? Yep!).
Re:Thank goodness! (Score:5, Insightful)
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If I get a Bluetooth scale I sure as heck am not doing so to run a crappy app on a desktop PC. These apps do not run well, they do not work well. The were designed for a completely different interface in mind. Okay I'll concede they actually run okay on a device like a Surface with native tough input, but all in all most apps just don't translate their touch interfaces well to a mouse and keyboard.
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Can you elaborate a little more on this? Using an interface designed for a mouse/keyboard a touch device isn't great, but I'm not seeing a problem using an interface designed for touch on a mouse/keyboard device.
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Sure. When I have text open up on an app in size 72 font because it assumes my screen was 3" wide instead of 35" wide it's a problem (this isn't just Android mind you, you should see how ludicrous the calculator app looks on a tablet mode Windows machine if you accidentally full screen it).
But more importantly I've used several Android apps in WSA and several of them didn't work with scroll wheel or scroll bars. You literally had to click and drag the mouse to simulate a swipe. Ultimately the few WSA apps I
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Thanks, that's very helpful. I haven't played with Android apps on Windows at all, so my expectation was that it would be something more like FreeJ2ME with little configurable phone shaped windows.
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The emulator ecosystem is already there but not as full-featured/integrated (but certainly more mature).
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The emulator ecosystem is already there but not as full-featured/integrated (but certainly more mature).
This, if I were to run an Android program in Windows, I'd rather run it via an Emulator, PC hardware is more than powerful enough.
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You are right, and it is, so long as you have hacked Windows Subsystem for Android to have the Google Play Store support. Unfortunately without it, it's not at all surprising that the product is dead on the vine despite working really great!
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I find it beneficial for making videos. Recording with OBS works objectively better with Android on Windows apps vs. inside e.g. BlueStacks.
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Give me a native Kindle client! The app store version with the overhead of WSA is terrible from a performance and resource perspective. And the Amazon app store is like a closed down graveyard (it should just present the instructions for setting up Google Play Store).
WSL is another story altogether though. Fantastic stuff there (fully integrated python debugging in Linux? Yep!).
Performance terrible on a READER App?!? How shitty can their API be?!?
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The Kindle for PC Windows and OSX application has existed for many years before Android was even a dream.
Bye Microsoft. Nobody will miss you. (Score:1, Informative)
Microsoft is the leading cause of malware. By refusing to fix anything from longstanding issues to zero-day issues, they've ensured that their latest software is still backward compatible with Windows 3.1 (aka WFW and also a precursor to W95) and fully compatible with malware that uses these features.
Oh, so now they're not going to be on Android? Well the five users who've tried it are surely going to be disappointed.
Here is my outlook with a 360 degree view: Failure.
WhINE (Score:1)
> Wine[sic] exists... is that a vulnerability on Linux[sic]?
No. Userland is not a sophisticated attack vector. WINE is 100% userland system call replication (not emulation).
E
Re:Bye Microsoft. Nobody will miss you. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Microsoft is the leading cause of whiplash.
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TL;DR: At least with Windows, the problems can be fixed. With the competition, it's mandatory to buy new hardware if you want patches / updates.
Surprising (Score:1)
They no longer have a phone OS. They have no meaningful plans for one either. Why not make android emulator of their own and integrate it into windows software store thingy? Then just open their own android application store and take a cut just like play store does.
There are so many functional windows based android emulators out. Just buy one of the teams, or license their technology.
Re:Surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, they did, kind of sort of, but then partnered with *Amazon* as the app partner, very pointedly avoiding Play Store, which is really *the* partner that would have driven value, but is also the partner that Microsoft would not want.
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The idea sounds good, and that's what they did. But in reality a phone and a desktop PC are two different devices. I don't need a phone interface on a 35" monitor which requires me to click and drag my mouse to simulate a finger swipe which the app expects and is programmed for.
I've used it, briefly. It wasn't worth the horrible user experience.
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Yeah my suspicion was Microsoft saw the appeal and library of semi-pro and pro level apps the iPad ecosystem get's and figured it would be a safe bet to have support for those type of applications on Windows.
Of course I don't think that market has ever really come to fruition on Android so what you're left with is like you said, worse versions of pretty basic phone apps.
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Well, they did, but then made it:
-A pain to sideload
-Unable to do Play Store
So it was forever stuck with Amazon's rather anemic android store and ecosystem. That is after you jumped through a few hoops to get it going at all.
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The actual problem was lack of ability to install anything outside of the awful amazon store. Installing apks was a pain in the butt, and you couldn't install app store at all.
Meanwhile Bluestacks, Nox et al are very popular because they allow easy installation of google play and apks.
Why not convert Windows into a userland for Linux? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Microsoft keeps killing useful features
If this article is what you're referencing then you have a screw loose. This wasn't a useful feature. It was a borderline unused feature.
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If this article is what you're referencing then you have a screw loose. This wasn't a useful feature. It was a borderline unused feature.
It was a useful feature if you own a 2-in-1 or tablet. Third party developers have pretty much abandoned the idea that Windows can run on touchscreen devices, so being able to run Android apps made up for that.
Now yeah, if you are still using a traditional desktop or non-touchscreen laptop, being able to run Android apps would mostly be a novelty.
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Microsoft keeps killing useful features, so why not just turn Windows into a user land extension of Linux? That way you keep all the Linux superior internals, and for users who want a terrible, difficult, and painful user experience, they can go that route and use Windows 11 on Linux. Of course that would also allow the use of DE's like Gnome, KDE, and Budgie, with the option to run Windows applications, solving the compatibility issues.
I think I found the issue. If you "have the option to run Windows applications" instead of being stuck having to use Windows to run any applications, Microsoft loses every aspect of the game they are currently playing: User lock in, telemetry for ad-serving, the ad-serving itself, not to mention forced bundling/force installs of new garbage nobody's asking for just to keep cluttering up your system. All that would become optional, instead of forced. And Microsoft is NOT about to let a user decide how their
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It would break a massive amount of hardware, with no upgrade path for users who own it.
It's not just an issue with drivers. Linux is fundamentally different in the way it handles some stuff like USB devices and disks, with no way to map those onto Windows APIs in a way that will work reliabily.
Even stuff like the shitty window managers that Linux suffers from won't map well into Windows UI and apps. There will be weird performance issues because of the different ways Linux and Windows handle almost everythi
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Getting to feel like google (Score:3)
They really should do some additional product evaluations in house before they push this stuff out.
It's getting to be google-like here with projects that I actually use that get killed off.
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So, their getting rid of Windows Mixed Reality (and bricking any VR headsets that depend upon it) as well as getting rid of this?
They aren't bricking anything. WMR can continue to be used through to the end of 2026 after which it'll stop getting security updates. Do you think your 2-3year old headsets will still be in use in 2027? I mean the entire experience was pretty shitty across the board for WMR with horrendous controllers, universally poor tracking, and none of the WMR headsets have any roadmap for improving in the future or implementing the many features that outclass them from HTC, Meta and Apple. I don't suspect any people
Well that sucks (Score:4, Insightful)
This was one of the few good features in Windows 11. It made tablet mode more useful since Windows really has a lack of apps that are properly designed for touchscreen use. Plus, I used it to control my Tuya smart devices from my desktop, since there is no Windows version of their Smart Life app.
Back to Bluestacks or whatever else is worth trying for Android in a VM, I suppose.
Dafuq?! (Score:2)
This does suck somewhat... (Score:2)
Having an Android emulation layer could be useful, as there are a lot of Android apps that can come in handy. I wonder what will replace this, perhaps allowing for access to the Google Play Store, as well as Amazon's store.
deprecated? (Score:2)
Re: deprecated? (Score:1)
all three users... (Score:2)
Applies? (Score:3)
Amazon has an app store?
Windows has apps ala phones? I thought Microsoft's business model was spying on everything I did, listening in, doing screenshots, monitoring every web site I went to regardless of browser, and passed it through AI to put me into 10,000 bins for robotized ad sales on the fly, and coughing up that to government without a warrant?
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Remember about 3-4 years ago when the supply chain issues were resulting in base shelves in U.S. supermarkets. Amazon's app store is like that.
Not surprised... (Score:2)
Without access to the Google Play Store, it was doomed. You think that such a feature would be a boom to Android development, but the development chain is all about emulation that rules out running production apps.