When Microsoft announced Windows 11 last June, one of the key new features that it showed was Android app support. However, it didn’t arrive at launch, and to date, you still have to be a Windows Insider to run an Android app natively on Windows. The preview launched on October 20, 2021, three months ago today, so let’s take a look at the progress.
A brief history of Android apps on Windows
Microsoft has been trying to get this to work for *checks watch* about seven years now. At the second ever Windows 10 event in January 2015, the company announced four “bridges” to help populate the store with apps. One of them was Project Astoria, which would essentially put Android apps in what was then called the Windows Store, and they’d just run on Windows 10.
Microsoft has been trying to put Android apps on Windows for seven years.
Project Astoria never shipped outside of previews for Windows phones, and the real reason isn’t really known. Some reports were that Project Astoria worked so well that Microsoft thought no one would bother to make Windows apps anymore. I had heard at one point that it wasn’t good enough, and that it wasn’t going to be. Either way, Microsoft said that it was simply too confusing for developers having the option to port an Android app or to port an iOS app (Project Islandwood), so it was scrapping the former.
The year after that, Microsoft introduced the Windows Subsystem for Linux, letting users run Linux command shells on Windows. A few years after that with WSL 2.0, it actually started shipping a Linux kernel inside of Windows 10. With all of that Linux work done, it started to pave the way for Android apps on Windows, once again.
As mentioned above, with the announcement of Windows 11, Microsoft introduced what was internally called Project Latte, its newest initiative for running Android apps on Windows. These apps are set to come from the Amazon Appstore, but it’s also part of a broader Microsoft Store plan to let users get apps from wherever they want. While Amazon may have an initial exclusive since it’s working with Microsoft on the platform, the Microsoft Store is open to other vendors, even Google if it should want to get on board.
How it started, and how it’s going
The initial preview arrived in the Beta channel and strangely enough, it came to the Dev channel later. Since the Dev channel usually gets new features first, I think a lot of people thought this might mean that the feature was farther along than it was. It really wasn’t though.
The truth is that in three months, not much has changed.
Getting set up
You still need to be on either the Beta or Dev channel to get the Windows Subsystem for Android, and you can enroll any time and get started. Keep in mind the differences between the two Windows Insider channels though. The Dev channel will put you in the rs_prerelease branch, so you’ll be on some future version of Windows that you can’t easily roll back from without doing a factory reset. The Beta channel will just give you cumulative updates until it’s time to start testing Windows 11 version 22H2.
Once you restart your PC to enroll in the Windows Insider Program, you should immediately be …….
Source: https://www.xda-developers.com/android-apps-windows-11-how-its-going/