Epic Games Store, Discord, and Zoom all join Windows 11’s more flexible app store

Epic Games Store, Discord, and Zoom all join Windows 11’s more flexible app store

3 years ago
Anonymous $WHrWmjSJBZ

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/discord-libreoffice-and-other-app-stores-come-to-the-microsoft-store-in-windows-11/

When Microsoft introduced Windows 11 over the summer, it also detailed a major shift in strategy for its app store. In an effort to woo more developers and their apps after years of indifference, Microsoft said it would allow all kinds of apps developed and packaged with all kinds of tools into the Microsoft Store, including everything from traditional Win32 apps to Electron apps to progressive web apps (PWAs).

Now we're seeing some of the fruits of that change—Microsoft has announced that major third-party apps like Zoom, Discord, Adobe Reader, the VLC media player, and even the LibreOffice suite are all now available in the Microsoft Store for people using the Windows 11 Insider Preview builds. Web apps like Wikipedia, Reddit, and Tumblr are also available. These PWAs look and work just like the regular websites but can easily be pinned to Start or the Taskbar and can display notification badges and a few other benefits that make them feel a bit more like desktop apps.