Windows 11 users are getting a rejig for the Microsoft Store to make it easier to find apps or games that might be relevant or interesting.
As posted on X (formerly Twitter) by Rudy Huyn, Principal Architect for the Microsoft Store, there’s a holiday update inbound for testers.
Exciting Holiday Update: The #MicrosoftStore now prioritizes discovering new applications and games by deprioritizing those you already installed on your device. This feature in beta version is currently available to #Windows #Insiders. pic.twitter.com/WR8Kzqr3G1December 18, 2023
This means that the store will no longer show apps and games installed on your device – or at least, it won’t show nearly as many – and will instead favor new apps and games that you might enjoy based on your past download history.
Hopefully, this adjustment won’t take long to arrive with a broader rollout to Windows 11 users who aren’t testers.
Note that the Microsoft Store did already show apps you might want to grab, it’s just that the balance has shifted more towards displaying these, rather than installed software.
Analysis: Another (small) step forward
This is another useful move for the Microsoft Store, as it’s not much help to show the user what they’ve already got installed on their PC. While we’re not keen on Microsoft’s ‘suggestions’ throughout Windows, in the case of an app store, recommendations can be more useful to glance at than a list of what you already know about.
That said, this change alone is obviously not going to do much in terms of persuading folks to use the Microsoft Store if they don’t bother with it. The move is hardly a major selling point in itself.
Still, Microsoft has been doing a lot of work on the store of late, and those improvements are building momentum. The store now loads up way faster, and we’ve seen meatier chunks of work, too. Most notably the introduction of AI (it’s getting everywhere) in the form of a dedicated hub for AI software – and also AI-generated review summaries.
The latter could be pretty handy indeed, as wading through a bunch of reviews isn’t much fun, so it’s a useful task where AI can do the proverbial grunt work.
Via Windows Central