Baby steps. Microsoft finally made good on its promise of bringing native support for Android apps on Windows 11 systems last week, by allowing Insiders to download and run these applications.
For scientific purposes, of course.
This highly anticipated feature was supposed to arrive with Windows 11, but suffered a slight delay.
But now, users enrolled in the preview program have access to a selection of Android apps that they can download and run via the Windows Subsystem for Android — WSA for short. In fact, the feature is currently only available or Insiders in the United States as of this writing.
And that is because Microsoft wants to test this out thoroughly, collect more feedback and apply some polish before letting all Windows 11 users run Android apps natively on their system.
As a result, only 50 Android apps are available for testing right now, with Microsoft explaining that it worked together with developers specifically to ensure that these applications and games run properly on Windows 11.
“We have partnered with Amazon and popular app developers to curate 50 apps for Windows Insiders to test and validate across a broad set of hardware. We will release new apps through Windows Insider Program updates in the coming months.”
So, new apps are in line for arrival, as we move to the next level after this very early testing.
That’s not to say that the selection is lackluster right now.
Several mobile games like Lords Mobile and Coin Master are up for grabs, as are reading apps, including the official Kindle client. Plenty of learning stuff too, with Khan Academy Kids and the Lego Duplo World application.
Clearly, the goal is to make sure everything is working as expected, before expanding the selection, and then making the feature itself available for everyone.
When that happens, when Android app support could arrive for the final, stable version of Windows 11 remains to be seen. Microsoft has not yet commented on an estimate timeframe, but that is likely the next step.
