Microsoft is acknowledging many of its top applications and developers in a new Microsoft Store App Awards.
The brand has announced winners, runners-up, and finalists of various awards categories, split between Community Choice Awards that were nominated by users and Microsoft Store Editor’s Choice Awards that were selected in-house.
While the prizes are unknown, the awards are meant to bring awareness to the range of applications available on at the Microsoft Store.
The Community Choice Awards include:
- The best utility apps as ShareX and Speedtest by Ookla.
- The best file management apps as Files App and Rufus.
- The best open platform apps as Auto Dark Mode, EarTrumpet, and ModernFlyouts.
The Microsoft Store Editor’s Choice Awards include:
- The best video entertainment app as Disney+.
- The best audio and music app entertainment app as Spotify.
- The best creativity apps for Graphics and 3D as Canva and Paint.NET.
- The best creativity apps for audio and video as Wondershare Filmora.
- The best productivity app as LiquidText.
- The best social app as Discord.
Microsoft’s editor team also gave special recognition to the app Talk for Me, a text-to-speech and speech assistance application.
Having revamped the Microsoft Store on Windows in 2021, the app store has faced some criticism for not having sufficient compatibility with a number of applications. Microsoft recently added its own Microsoft Teams application to the Microsoft Store with support for Windows 10 and Windows 11 in mid-May.
Soon following, the brand confirmed at its recent Build conference, the ending of the wait-list program for Win32 apps in the Microsoft Store. This will allow even more applications compatibility with the Microsoft Store, in particular those that run on C++, WinForms, WPF, MAUI, React, Rust, Flutter, and Java – as long as they run on Windows.
Many publications noted that the Win32 program was oddly exclusive in the past, favoring third-party apps like Discord, Firefox, and Zoom, while several commonly used applications, such as Google Chrome and Steam, were not allowed on the Microsoft Store. It will be interesting to see which apps will now come to the app store with the restrictions lifted.
It will also be interesting to see how future Microsoft Store App Awards will pan out when more Win32 programs are added to the app store.
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