By Joe Udo
A senior Microsoft engineer stated that native apps are making a comeback, a view that seems to align with Microsoft’s recent efforts to revive the Windows 11 app ecosystem.
It was noted that web applications currently dominate the Microsoft Store (Windows Store), which is Microsoft’s primary channel for obtaining PC applications, especially suitable for users who want enhanced security on Windows 11. After years of iterations, the Microsoft Store’s performance has been significantly optimized, and it now supports applications built on various development frameworks.
After Microsoft gave developers more freedom to choose how to develop applications, it was widely believed that this move would greatly encourage developers to list their Windows 11 applications through the Microsoft Store.
As a result, many popular apps such as Netflix and WhatsApp have abandoned native Windows apps developed based on native frameworks like WinUI, and instead switched to Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) based on WebView2. Tests by Windows Latest found that on a computer with 8GB of RAM, WhatsApp used up as much as 600MB of memory even when idle.
This isn’t a problem unique to WhatsApp, which is based on WebView2. Discord, built on the Electron framework, can consume up to 4GB of memory, and the software even has a built-in function to silently restart the program to reduce memory usage.
On the other hand, while Progressive Web Apps are lightweight, they often lack core features such as offline mode found in native apps. Many Windows users complain that the widespread adoption of Progressive Web Apps is a worrying trend, ultimately severely degrading the overall operating system user experience.
Microsoft has clearly taken note of these complaints and has begun to take concrete steps to improve the current state of the Windows 11 application ecosystem.
Several months ago, Rudy Yunn, the lead architect of the Microsoft Store and File Explorer projects, officially confirmed that Microsoft plans to create purely native apps for Windows 11. Yunn did not disclose a specific timeline for the plan’s implementation.
Now, Microsoft senior engineer David Fowler posted on the social media platform X, saying, “Native apps are back.” This statement clearly indicates that Microsoft remains committed to fully implementing native apps for Windows 11.
David Fowler has worked at Microsoft for over a decade, deeply involved in the development of .NET, ASP.NET Core, and the Microsoft Developer Platform.
Fowler’s remarks about the “return of native apps” directly point to the current situation in Windows 11 where most native apps have been replaced by web-based versions, and his post is seen as a signal from Microsoft’s internal engineering team.
This confirms previous reports that Microsoft has begun separating core Windows 11 functionalities from the web architecture. As is well known, the Start Menu is being migrated from a React-based shell component to the WinUI framework to reduce latency and improve performance.
Neither Fowler nor Yuen disclosed specific implementation plans, but industry insiders generally believe that the newly released .NET 10 will be the core key to achieving this goal.
.NET 10 features what Microsoft calls Native AOT (Ahead-of-Time) technology, which is said to significantly reduce application startup time and memory usage, greatly alleviating resource consumption issues for Microsoft’s own development team.
Microsoft’s Copilot application, built on a web-based architecture, is extremely resource-intensive, with consistently high memory usage. Real-world testing shows that the application’s background idle memory usage reaches a maximum of 500MB, and surges to 1GB when in use.
If developers abandon web development technologies and cross-platform development tools such as React Native and Flutter, and instead use .NET 10 for development, this problem of excessive resource consumption may be completely resolved.
While native apps theoretically offer significant advantages, one of Microsoft’s biggest challenges right now is persuading developers to create more native apps for the Windows platform.
Whether Microsoft will introduce incentive policies to support native app development and expand the number of native apps in the Microsoft Store remains to be seen. Before that, the Redmond-based tech giant must first complete the pure native reconstruction of several of its official Windows 11 apps to demonstrate the real value of its app ecosystem upgrade to the industry.
