It wasn’t until a few years ago — in 2021 — that Windows 11 got official support for Android apps thanks to a VM maintained by Microsoft called Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA). With WSA, Windows 11 users could install and run almost the entire range of Android apps, optionally through Amazon’s Android marketplace — the Amazon Appstore — thanks to an agreement between Amazon and Microsoft.
Now Windows 11 is losing official support for Android apps — and access to the Amazon Appstore along with it.
Microsoft announced today that it plans to stop maintaining WSA within a year. Windows 11 users who have installed Amazon Appstore or Android apps will still have access to those apps until March 5, 2025 — but not after that. And starting tomorrow, Amazon plans to prevent new users from downloading the Amazon Appstore from the Microsoft Store, Microsoft’s app store for Windows.
Image credits: Microsoft
“Customers can continue to use the Amazon Appstore apps they previously installed and will continue to receive app updates [after March 6],” Amazon wrote in a blog post published today. “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 the Amazon Appstore on Windows 11 is completely retired.”
As Ars Technica’s Andrew Cunningham notes, WSA, while a convenient way to run Android apps on Windows, was limited from the start by not being able to access the Google Play Store, the official Android app store—at least not without a workaround. The Amazon Appstore had less choice, no doubt pushing users in many cases to native Windows or web-based versions of apps they could install via WSA.
In other words, WSA usage was probably pretty low – at a time when Microsoft’s attention was very clearly focused elsewhere, such as generative AI and its various incarnations in Windows.
Now, just because Microsoft is ending support for WSA doesn’t mean it will become impossible to run Android apps on Windows. There are a number of third-party alternatives, including Waydroid, which provides support for Android apps via Linux-based system containers, and BlueStacks, an Android emulator for Windows and macOS.
Microsoft’s commitment to bridging the gap between Android and Windows devices seems to be unwavering.
Just this week, Microsoft launched a feature that lets Android users use their device’s camera as a webcam on Windows 11. Elsewhere, Microsoft maintains apps like Link to Windows, which lets Android (and iOS) users make and receive calls, reply to messages and check and dismiss notifications from your Windows computer.