- Microsoft ending support for Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA)
- WSA designed to run Android apps from Amazon Appstore on Windows 11
- Support for WSA will end on March 5, 2025; no impact on Windows Subsystem for Linux.
Was it ever actually supported? I was waiting for it to be ready to switch to Windows 11 since android emulators are all extremely heavy, I just remember it being on a preview version.
It worked well. But only with Amazon AppStore apps, so nothing useful
This is what gets me. If they actually just let people install Android apps. It might have worked.
There was also nothing stopping you from sideloading apps. I used it with Auroa Store.
What about waydroid? is it heavy as well?
I don’t know, I’m on Windows 10, was thinking of bluestacks and LDplayer that I use to play some gachas on PC.
In my experience, Waydroid kinda sucked. It used more resources than an Android Emulator on Windows did with less performance in games. Of course, they’re different technologies (containerized vs VM) but the experience was vastly different. It lacks so many QoL features. You can’t dynamically change resolution. Can’t bind keys by default (need to install something for it) etc Wayland requirement was also a trouble for me (It didn’t work quite well and I kept running into issues) Intel > AMD > Nvidia for Waydroid
I think if you are using hardware that has poor supports for wayland (e.g. nvidia), then poor performance of waydroid is kind of expected.
Yeah software rendering sucks a lot for Nvidia users. I’m on AMD.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Microsoft announced today they will be winding down their support for Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA), which is similar to Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) but was designed to run Android apps from the Amazon Appstore atop Windows 11.
Windows Subsystem for Android hasn’t been as nearly as popular as Windows Subsystem for Linux itself and its scope was limited given the focus on the Amazon Appstore for obtaining Android apps.
Microsoft announced this morning on the WSA page: "Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android™️ (WSA).
As a result, the Amazon Appstore on Windows and all applications and games dependent on WSA will no longer be supported beginning March 5, 2025.
Customers that have installed the Amazon Appstore or Android apps prior to March 5, 2024, will continue to have access to those apps through the deprecation date of March 5, 2025."
This change is only in reference to Windows Subsystem for Android with no apparent changes around Windows Subsystem for Linux that continues to be quite popular for enjoying Linux desktop and CLI apps within the confines of Windows 11, especially among developers and those forced to use Microsoft Windows due to corporate/employer requirements.
The original article contains 232 words, the summary contains 199 words. Saved 14%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
One of the main reasons I made the switch from 10 to 11 and I used it constantly. I have several services that simply don’t work right from the web interface because of the drm BS. Being able to use the android apps worked great even if side loading an alternative store was a little bit of a pain on initial setup.
I am even more glad I recently made the switch to a 100% Linux environment at home. I have a simple waydroid install and it works much easier and is equally integrated into the desktop experience when compared to WSA. Only hassle is making sure you have a Wayland compositor since it won’t work with x11 but that’s just confirming a configuration essentially so par for the course really.
Regardless, this would be very disappointing if I hadn’t already had an alternative.
Man what in the world are they doing.
Microsoft is working hard at sucking, from what I’ve seen the past few years.
yearsdecadesI think they’ll be happy with their OpenAI investment.
Until the AI bubble goes kaplooey
“the internet is just a passing fad”
Windows Subsystem for Android hasn’t been as nearly as popular as Windows Subsystem for Linux itself and its scope was limited given the focus on the Amazon Appstore for obtaining Android apps.
Sounds like no one was using it.
To the surprise of no one when it was limited by needing to use the Amazon App store
You could side load apps at least.
But I don’t think the type of person who wants to use this feature also would want the Amazon app store installed on their device.
Also, don’t google offer some functionality for testing Android apps in Windows?
Android studio has that.
But android studio sucks. Also it’s just a KVM VM so you can just make your own and save the like 20 gigs of bloat.
They’re probably doubling their efforts on native ARM apps
I knew WSL was a thing but had absolutely no idea about WSA.
WSA was.
Did Microsoft just pull a Google on a Google product? Mind blowing.
Must’ve gotten infected when eating the Android sweets.
I hate this. I like wsa and it was one of the main reasons I went to w11. Well… whatever, we can’t have nice things I guess
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My exact reaction lol. These companies are so focused on the short term it’s ridiculous.
Microsoft’s really trying to steal Google’s thunder with that move.
It’s interesting that you should say that. Maybe they had to cancel it because they realized there were some legal implications and that the new antitrust enforcement environment would keep them from being able to really follow through with the WSA.
The amazon app store didn’t have a complete app store and it was a big workaround to get apps to run that are not on the amazon store.
They halfbaked the release and killed it becuase of that.
That was fast
Without the only app store that matters, this was dead on day 1 for me.
Talk about a “oh no, anyway” moment. I used the feature for about two days, saw no benefit from it, and completely forgot it was even there.
Lmao just another thing Linux does better anyway.
So could theoretically install waydroid in WSL?
someone did that before microsoft had even released WSA but I don’t see anything about people doing it recently. probably someone is working on it right now though, given this news.
What’s the easiest way to run Android apps on Linux?
Waydroid or run Bliss OS in a VM.
BlissOS Zenith didnt boot for me poorly, and other versions are slightly outdated. But I will try another one.
Waydroidnruns a rootful LXD container I think, which is not isolated at all. An OCI image ran through Podman would be way better.
Novaspirit Tech did a decent video on setup. He is using Proxmox but there should be the same settings in KVM.
I’ve been using BlueStacks. How do those compare to BlueStacks?
I’m guessing at the very least they have less ads than blue stacks, lol.
Bluestacks is full of Ads and junk. But it has actual additions to make it work with a keyboard. Waydroid wasnt able to register multi-input for me, which makes basically any game unplayable.
But the android app smart autoclicker is the perfect replacement for bluestacks things.
Think there’s also an official emulator from android studios but I could be wrong
Yes. Built into Android Studio. Has existed for at least five years. However I only ever used it with the apps I was developing and never even considered using it as a means to launch outside apps. That probably would have been painful.
Waydroid
Waydroid
I almost panicked and thought it was WSL until I got to the Android part. Never knew it was a thing. Still sucks for developers who depended on it.
If they hadn’t locked into amazon appstore, I feel like they could have made it work.
Either cough up money for Playstore or better yet just make windows store compatible with android and easier to use.
The Amazon app store is the most mature app store outside of Google Play. It’s not just as simple as converting the Windows store to Android because of course they would need to develop an Android version of every app in the windows store.
TIL there’s an Amazon app store.
Lol. Yeah, they’ve got quite the wall around their garden. It’s hell getting the play store running on their hardware.
Have you ever tried using aurora instead of the play store for devices that don’t natively have it?
Nope. Never had enough trust. I’d sooner use a website and use virustotal to scan. At least you know what you are getting that way.
I may experiment with it on an expendable device, so thank you all the same.
I’ve since tried it on a Bliss FOSS image. Still not able to get apps working.
I recently discovered Aurora, which allowed me to easily install Firefox on my Fire HD. Lots of other stuff too (better launcher, for instance) but I found it because the web just sucks without Ublock
Whelp, even less reason to upgrade to Windows 11 when Windows 10 is retired. Microsoft doing its best to convince me to switch to Linux full-time.
