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The Microsoft Store makes it easy to find, install, and uninstall apps on Windows 11. Apps from the Microsoft Store deserve more confidence than those you might download elsewhere because Microsoft vets them for security, device compatibility, and family safety. The selection of apps is growing, too. Microsoft has made it easier for developers to convert traditional Win32 applications and PWA apps (basically, app-like websites) so that they can now join the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps that used to be the only type in the store.Dig into our list of the best Windows 11 apps in the Microsoft Store below and read what we like about each.
Recommended by Our Editors
Adobe’s lightweight web application is trying to democratize good design by making it accessible to everyone. With the Adobe Express app, you can create impactful Facebook posts, Instagram stories, logos, and posters using templates and stock content. It’s also helpful for creating marketing collateral, school projects, work presentations, and other projects. Express has an impressive toolset with loads of design elements, many of which you can use for free, including Adobe Firefly, an AI image generation tool that lets you write a description of the image you want to see, and Express makes it appear. Finally, you can use Express to share your work with collaborators or customers. A subscription ($9.99 per month) adds many more templates and stock assets.
Adobe Express Review
Shopping and web services giant Amazon has put out an impressive—and affordable—music streaming service. If you spring for Amazon Music Unlimited, you get much better sound quality than you get with Spotify and at least as extensive a library. If you have the right gear, you can even listen to spatial audio with the app and use the Exclusive mode on Windows. The app lets you download your sounds for offline listening. With an Amazon Prime subscription, you get Standard service, just 2 million tracks at 320kbps. For $7.99 per month, you can enjoy Hi-Res and 75 million tunes. A free account (no credit card required) gets you ad-supported stations and playlists but no on-demand listening.
Amazon Music Unlimited Review
Social networking app Discord isn’t just for gamers anymore, though that’s still the lion’s share of its audience. With Discord, you can join study groups, watch live-streaming videos, and even converse with other users in Latin or Ancient Greek. Discord communities exist for developers, musicians, entertainment, and all the big (and small) multiplayer video games. If you plan to upload large files, you need to join Discord Nitro, which starts at $2.99 per month.
Discord Review
FeedLab is a terrific RSS reader for Windows. It shows a list of categories you can subscribe to, or you can sign in with a Feedly account to get all the feeds you’ve added there. You create topic groups for your feeds to keep them organized. A three-panel interface shows your subscriptions on the left, the post titles in the middle, and their content on the right. You can easily click out to the source links to read the full articles. Windows notifications are an option and built-in sharing makes sending that viral post to social a snap. Most everything is free, with unobtrusive banner ads, but if you want offline use and to remove the ads, you can make a small donation.
That’s right, you can now install the venerable Firefox web browser from your PC’s app store. Sure, Windows 11 comes with a terrific browser, Microsoft Edge, but we still love this open-source, independent alternative. We also love its optional Container tabs, which save you from clearing cookies or using a second browser to log in to (or out of) more than one account on the same site. Firefox remains a fast, customizable, and privacy-focused browser, with password syncing, extensions, and good support for web standards.
If you’re on Instagram, you might want to install the app right on your PC. Watch the stories, see the selfies, carry on direct message conversations, see who’s following whom, and create and post memes—it’s all there in this PWA app. It lacks access to your PC’s camera, so you can’t make instant videos and photos for Instagram, but you can upload photos stored locally.
If you can’t spring for the market-leading Microsoft productivity apps—Word, Excel, and PowerPoint—LibreOffice may fill the bill. Some may be surprised that Microsoft allows this free and open-source competitor to its Microsoft 365 franchise (better known by its former name, Office 365) into Windows 11’s app store. The free LibreOffice apps are compatible with the latest document file formats, such as DOCX, XLSX, and so on. However, getting them from the app store entails a small donation to the project, but one that’s still a pittance compared with what you’d pay for the Microsoft apps.
LibreOffice Review
Microsoft 365, our Editors’ Choice winner among the best office suites, now has a Microsoft Store app that serves as a hub for all its included applications and your documents. From the Microsoft Office app (which is what’s installed when you choose Microsoft 365 from the store), you can launch documents in the web versions of the suite apps or on locally installed software. In addition to the productivity apps, the hub gives you access to Microsoft To Do, Teams, Family Safety, as well as Skype phone-calling credit. Free users can use the online versions of Office apps, while subscribers get 1TB of online storage and downloadable Office applications.
Microsoft 365 Review
Don’t lose those flashes of inspiration, travel ideas, new contacts, sketches, or meeting notes. Save and organize them in OneNote. This note-taking app works on every platform, syncing all notes across all your devices. Your notes can include images, audio files, online videos, and even hand-written math equations. Students can use OneNote for class materials and planning, and you can password-protect sections to keep them from prying eyes. Unlike a word processor, there’s no need to create and save files, and search is quick across all your notes.
Microsoft OneNote Review
MyRadar Weather Radar
Windows 11 has a button in the taskbar that gives you access to the weather report, but if you want more detail, the MyRadar app is a spiffy option. You can choose layers, including winds, temperatures, clouds, and fronts, and view historical weather. Search a location to see its current weather conditions and hourly and daily forecasts with attractive, colorful graphs. The free version gives you plenty, but for advanced features and an ad-free experience, you have to pay $9.99 per year.
Nebo is a cloud-synced, cross-platform, note-taking and document-creation app. It supports a boundless canvas for notes and documents that can be written with the stylus or keyboard. You can add drawings, equations, and photos to your documents or notes. You can also upload PDFs and annotate them in Nebo. The app costs $9.99 and is available for iPads and Chromebooks, as well as Windows 11.
Binge your favorite series from the popular streaming service in glorious 4K on your Windows PC or tablet. With the Windows Netflix app, you can download (some) shows for offline viewing. Switch account profiles for different viewers and add or remove shows to your list. Managing your account still requires opening the web browser, though. While the app is free to install, Netflix subscriptions start at $6.99 per month with ads or from $15.49 per month without ads.
Netflix Review
Some people use the web version of this group chat app for business, but who wants another browser tab? The Slack app facilitates your interaction with teammates, including sharing images and meeting for video or voice group calls. It ties in nicely with Windows 11’s notifications and Focus Sessions feature, in case you don’t want to be disturbed by its notifications. Small teams can use Slack for free with some restrictions. Full service starts at $8.75 per person per month.
Slack Review
With a pleasing range of curated genres to choose from—indie pop, electro-chill, folk, reggae—the free SomaFM group of internet radio stations is a great streaming music option. The app lets you mark stations as favorites for easy access and respond to your DJ’s current selection with an approving heart or a disapproving ?! to give feedback. It’s not for fans of top 40 pop, but you’re assured of discovering hidden musical gems. The interface is clear and simple. You never hear commercial ads, but the DJs occasionally exhort you to support the stations. There’s an Amazon link for every song, though you often have better luck searching for the music on your own since a lot of it is obscure enough not to be sold on Amazon.
The version of Telegram that you get from the Windows 11 app store has nearly everything its mobile app counterparts do: broadcast groups, video calls, multi-factor authentication, an auto-message delete option, screencasting capabilities, night mode, and support for multiple accounts. While Telegram does have some end-to-end encryption, it’s only used on Secret Chats, so beware (and perhaps explore other private messaging apps if privacy is your top concern). You don’t get some location-based features like People Nearby, and there aren’t quite as many image-editing options in the Windows app version of Telegram.
Telegram Review
If you’ve decided to be a Twitter quitter, take a look at Threads. In addition to having a more pleasing interface, it is (so far) a more civil environment. Since it comes from the creators of Instagram, it already has a vastly larger audience than many of the other would-be Twitter killers, such as Mastodon.
Use it at your peril, given all the controversy around the social video app owned by a Chinese parent company—we include TikTok here because it’s a well-designed app available in the Microsoft Store on Windows 11. This version of the teen sensation network lets you not only consume all that great dance and humor content but also upload video from your PC, though it doesn’t support direct uploading from a PC’s webcam. You can send direct messages and buy coins to support your favorite creators in the app as well. It’s free but supported by ads. One downside of using TikTok on your PC is that most images are in the tall phone aspect ratio.
In this world awash with subscription-based streaming video content, what could be better than a completely free service loaded with shows, movies, and even live content? Tubi is by far one of the best free video streaming services. (OK, it does have ads.) A massive menu offers enough genres to suit any couch potato, and Tubi Kids serves the youngins with age-appropriate content; see our list of the best streaming apps for kids for more recommendations. Tubi also has some original content. One downside is you can’t download movies or shows to watch offline as some paid apps let you do.
Tubi Review
Yes, Windows 11 comes with a slick new media player, but VLC (also called VLC media player) has diehard fans for a reason. It can play and rip just about any audio or video format in existence. There are, in fact, two flavors of VLC on the Microsoft Store for apps: the standard edition and the UWP version. The first includes all the app’s multifarious and intricately detailed features, while the UWP version is simpler and a lot more touch-friendly. Both are completely free and open source, though the download site has a handy donation bar along the top. There’s even a version available for Windows on Arm devices.
If you ever communicate with anyone outside the US, chances are you’re one of the more than 5 billion WhatsApp users. The Windows store app sends and receives end-to-end encrypted text chats and calls with your contacts. Do note that communication with business accounts isn’t completely private; the business may forward chat messages to suppliers and so on. WhatsApp lets you do video and voice calls, too. Use disappearing messages, update your profile, or send photos, emoji, and voice messages in this simple Windows store app. Setting up is a simple matter of QR pairing, and you can now use the same WhatsApp account on more than one PC or phone simultaneously. The app is free and has no ads.
WhatsApp Review
Love it for its breaking trends or hate it for all its anonymous trolls and tedious billionaire owner, it’s nearly impossible to avoid X, aka Twitter, as it’s such a part of modern life and gives you a way to stay in touch with what’s going on. This Windows Store app is a PWA that lets you see what your favorite celebs and pols are spouting off about at the moment. The app lets you switch among multiple accounts for all your tweeting, retweeting, and hearting. It’s totally free, though ads and pushes to subscribe to X Premium frequently appear in your feed.
Few are unfamiliar with the video meeting app Zoom. After catapulting into the vernacular and addressing the nefarious Zoom-bombing that occurred during the pandemic, the app has reverted to being primarily a business tool, recently rebranded as Zoom Workplace. As with Teams and Google Meet, Zoom has added noise canceling, custom backgrounds, and focus options to make you look your best during video meetings. Despite its corporate focus, anyone can use Zoom free for 40-minute meetings with up to 100 participants.
Zoom One Review
Dig Deeper Into Windows 11Once you download all the apps you need, you can customize the start menu to show the apps you access the most.
5 Windows 11 Tips and Tricks You Need to Know
For more advice and details about what you can do with Windows 11, read our in-depth Windows 11 review. Become a power user by learning the top Windows 11 tips and tricks. Finally, keep up with our coverage of Microsoft’s operating system on our Windows 11 page.
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