Backport for Win10

[Dakkaron]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe

Afaik, WSA doesn't run on Windows 10. I cannot currently install Win11, due to hardware incompatibility.

Describe the solution you'd like

Now that WSLG is working on Win10 would it be possible to backport WSA to Win10 as well?

Describe alternatives you've considered

No response

Please specify the version of Windows Subsystem for Android

2210.40000.7.0

[WSLUser]

I would second that this feature had been long requested on Win 10 for years and should be made available there as well. WSL was able to backport and WSA is similar enough that it should be easy to add the bits that were conveniently gated behind win11 flag when many consumers either can't upgrade to win11 (because of a company or a hardware incompatibility) or don't want to (a majority of the users of Windows)

[hamza-usmani]

Hi, thank you for this feature request. Currently this isn't on our immediate roadmap, but we're always listening to the community! As app-developers, is a lack of Windows 10 support on the subsystem affecting your usage/users metrics? Are you finding a large gap in your user base that is still on Windows 10, unable to use your Android app on Windows?

[Dakkaron]

Hi, thanks for the answer! Since we obviously lack the metrics for that (customers that don't exist can not really be counted) I don't have hard numbers. But judging from the fact, that Win10 still has a market share of some 70%, I am pretty sure that there are lots of users that could benefit from WSA on Windows 10.

Also, Bluestacks remains pretty popular, even though it is a 3rd party download (compared to WSA which directly integrates Android apps as if they were native apps).

I think, it would be possible to reach a much bigger audience with WSA than with Bluestacks, given that apps only need to be installed from the store.

Sure, most users are already using Android apps on Android, but there are very valid use cases, where users would benefit a lot from running an app locally on the PC.

[yonggamer]

A pc has more performance than a phone

[zakius]

WSA is already good enough to be a daily driver for most apps not relying on Google Play Services, not only for development purposes, so it would be beneficial to get it supported on Windows 10. I am aware this may be in contrary to the upper management goals intending to promote w11 at all costs so every backported feature hurts them, but users' needs should be prioritized

[andrewleader]

As Hamza mentioned, the WSA GitHub is for WSA app developers to share feedback (not about end-user feedback). @zakius are you an Android app developer looking to bring your app to Windows? If so, what is your Android app you develop and have you decided to not bring it to Windows because it won't run on Win10? Would love to understand where you're blocked in bringing your app to Windows!

If you're using WSA as an end-user, you can submit feedback on https://aka.ms/feedbackhub. It doesn't appear that anyone has created a request for WSA Windows 10 support on Feedback Hub. Once you share your feedback there, you can post a link to your feedback here for others to vote on. Thank you!

[Dakkaron]

I had a bit of a talk with the other app teams and business in our company. Currently, getting our apps to WSA doesn't really have a high priority, since the amount of users are quite limited. Our software is mainly B2B and most of our customers are locked into Win10, due to company policies and old company devices.

While not extremely hard, porting to WSA does incur some expenses, since we have to adjust for missing Google services and also we have to maintain an additional store presence. Not a huge amount of cost, but enough that business will only do it, if there is a significant potential user base.

Win11 currently doesn't have that yet, and probably will not have it until 2025, when Win10 goes into EOL.

So if WSA stays Win11 only, business probably will not let us port our apps to WSA until Win11 has significant enough market share.

Considering the number of Android apps missing from Amazon/Microsoft Store, a lot of other developers probably think the same way.

Implementing WSA in Win10 could speed up adoption by a few years, and make WSA a common use case much quicker.

Tbh, the Amazon App Store is pretty uninteresting for devs. It has a very small amount of users that can't be reached by Google Play. But the Win10/Win11 platform, with it's huge combined market share, would be seriously interesting.

Having an OS that "natively" runs apps from the two biggest platforms, that would be very nice.

[andrewleader]

@Dakkaron we'd love to learn more about your B2B business and your Android app, can you reach out to us at wsa-feedback@microsoft.com?

[bolandnick18]

I would like to see the WSA available on windows 10 as I am not big fan of windows 11 as Microsoft has completely damage windows 11 with very bad styles that’s including start menu, task menu, ads and removing classic features and replacing them with terrible modems feature that’s I hate even more…

I am requesting the WSA to be available on windows 10 with Google Play Store

[Cryolitia]

You can use https://github.com/cinit/WSAPatch