Microsoft is scheduled to end support for the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA) and the Amazon Appstore in 2025. After three years of trying to bring Android apps to Windows 11, the company is abandoning its efforts, and on March 5, 2025, the Windows Subsystem for Android and Amazon Appstore will be deprecated.
The company quietly announced with a note on the official documentation page for WSA. The announcement notes that the apps and games from the Amazon Appstore app for Windows 11 will no longer be supported after March 5, 2025.
Amazon has also published an article detailing the discontinuation of the Amazon Appstore following the Microsoft update. The company’s announcement is similar to the one from Microsoft, but it offers a little more details, noting that developers don’t need to take any actions, but they can continue to submit updates for existing apps during the “wind-down period.”
WSA is retiring on Windows 11
If you have a setup using the subsystem, you will continue to be able to access the Android apps from Amazon, but only until the end of the support date. Furthermore, starting on March 6, 2024, Android will no longer be searchable from the Microsoft Store.
The original idea was to bridge the gap between Windows and Android apps, but after several years of trying, the feature didn’t gain popularity among users or developers. One of the main reasons is that the Android experience was closely tied to the Amazon Appstore ecosystem, making it impossible to install Google apps, such as Gmail, Maps, and others, because they require Google Play Store services, which were never supported on WSA.
The Amazon store app included thousands of apps and games, but none of them were worthy, and most of them were low-quality games.
It was possible to sideload apps outside the Amazon Appstore, but you need to go through an extensive list of steps to install the Google Play Store to download and install those applications that matter.
Android apps and games moving forward
If you have been using the Windows Subsystem for Android on your computer, you still have a few choices to continue accessing the Android apps on Windows 11. For example, you can use the Google Play Game app that brings Android games to Windows 11 and 10 for gaming.
Also, if you want to access those apps from Google and other companies, such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and games, you can use solutions like BlueStacks. This particular option uses virtualization to run Android on top of Windows to access the apps and games.
