Universal Windows Apps can now be larger than 150 GB in the Store

Earlier this morning, Microsoft demonstrated how current Win32 apps (aka 'Classic Windows apps') can be ported as Universal Windows Apps that can run on various devices. Even better, these apps can be bought and downloaded through the store, and they avoid all the pitfalls of traditional Win32 apps, including bloated registries and poor uninstall abilities.

Microsoft is also now going to let those apps (and games) be larger than 150 GB in the universal Windows Store as AppX files.

This move is important because although current Modern apps may only be a few megabytes, big title games can easily be massive installations. The benefit here is that developers who are bringing over games from Win32 apps will not have any practical limits in terms of size. For reference, we are told that the Adobe Photoshop Elements Universal Windows App demoed on stage was just over 2 GB, which is rather large for an app in the Windows Store.

Of course, having file sizes that large will result in massive download times and it is not clear just how many games or apps would leverage that much for their AppX file size. However, this should facilitate developers in bringing more gaming titles to the Windows Store, and that is something we can get behind.

Adobe is expected to release AppX recompiled versions of its Win32 Photoshop Elements and Premier Elements apps later this year to the Windows Store.

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Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central. He is also the head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and wearable tech. He has reviewed laptops for over 10 years and is particularly fond of 2-in-1 convertibles, Arm64 processors, new form factors, and thin-and-light PCs. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, performed polysomnographs in NYC, and was a motion-picture operator for 17 years.