Microsoft’s ‘Project Latte’ Aims to Bring Android Apps to Windows 10

Microsoft is working on a software solution that would allow app developers to bring their Android apps to Windows 10 with little to no code changes by bundling them together as an MSIX and allowing developers to submit them to the Microsoft Store. According to sources familiar with the matter, the project is codenamed “Latte” and I am told that it could appear as early as next year.

The company has previously toyed with the idea of ​​bringing Android apps to Windows 10 via a codenamed Astoria project that never saw the light of day. The Latte project aims to provide a similar product, and is likely powered by the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Microsoft will, however, need to provide its own Android subsystem for Android apps to actually run.

Microsoft has announced that WSL will soon receive support for Linux GUI applications, as well as GPU acceleration, which should improve the performance of applications running through WSL.

Project Latte is unlikely to include support for Play Services, as Google doesn’t allow installation of Play Services on anything other than native Android devices and Chrome OS. This means that apps that require Play Services APIs will need to be updated to remove these dependencies before they can be submitted on Windows 10.

Today, users can run Android apps on their PCs through app streaming using the Your Phone app built into Windows 10, but this functionality has been limited to a handful of Samsung devices and n is not always reliable. Being able to install and run Android apps locally on your PC will provide a much better experience and won’t depend on which phone you have.

Project Latte will allow application developers to bring in applications that do not yet have a Windows version available. I will be interested to see what kind of apps will appear if Project Latte ships, as many Android apps are primarily designed for phones and are less desirable on anything larger than a phone-sized screen. .

Microsoft has made it clear over the past two years that it no longer sees native Windows apps as the ultimate solution when it comes to app development on the platform. Microsoft now hosts many application platforms including PWA, UWP, Win32, Linux (via WSL) and soon, Android apps.

Assuming Microsoft doesn’t cancel its plans with Project Latte, integrating Android apps on the platform will make Windows 10 a near universal operating system when it comes to app support. I’m told Microsoft hopes to announce Project Latte next year and may ship as part of the fall 2021 release of Windows 10.

In the meantime, what do you think of the integration of Android apps on Windows 10? Let us know in the comments.