Top 10 features users want in the Microsoft Store

Windows 10 and 11 are (in)famous for frequent prompts asking to provide feedback on various parts of the operating systems. Users who care enough can share their thoughts by responding to these prompts or sending feedback directly using the Feedback Hub app. These posts let everyone see which features and tweaks are most popular and desired among the Windows 10 and 11 user base.

The “Top 10 Features People Want” series has already covered Word, Teams, OneDriveand Outlook, and now it’s time to see what users want Microsoft to do in the Microsoft Store. Curiously, cricket sounds are Microsoft’s mainstream response. The company often provides feedback in Feedback Hub, but even the top-voted posts on the Microsoft Store have the simple “We’ve got this.”

1. Add the option to uninstall an application from the “Library” section – 4,900+ upvotes.
   You can open, share, rate, and pin apps to Start/taskbar, but not uninstall. Microsoft thinks you’re more likely to want to open a particular app from the “Library” section than uninstall it, which is questionable logic.
2. Add option to hide or delete applications in the “Library” section – 3,200+ upvotes.
   The Microsoft Store is not new, so there are long-term users with hundreds of apps/games. To keep their libraries tidy, these users may want to hide or remove certain apps.
3. Make it easy to view recently updated apps – 2100+ upvotes.
   The Microsoft Store has a single “Library” section, where it keeps all the apps you own alongside recently updated apps. The former are marked as “Purchased on” and the latter as “Modified on”. We can’t say why Microsoft doesn’t want to separate these sections and use appropriate wording to highlight recently updated apps (how a regular user should know what “Modified On” means). This is an especially confusing situation considering the fact that you can sort the library using various filters, such as “Applications”, “Games”, “Movies & TV”, and even “Included with device”.
4. Fight scams and fake apps more actively – 290+ upvotes.
   The situation with fake and fraudulent apps is less depressing today than it was a few years ago, and Microsoft seems to be better at removing stray apps. Still, it’s relatively easy to come across “crapps” abusing popular names for easy money. Do you want a “Google Chrome tutorial” for $9.99 $1.99? Don’t miss a great deal! While preparing this article, I even spotted a fake app in a “Specials” collection. Microsoft can’t get rid of all unwanted apps, but it can do better in at least do not recommend them to users.
5. Add tabs to Microsoft Store – 100+ upvotes.
   It’s hard to say why anyone would need this. Still, over a hundred Windows users think the Microsoft Store should support tabs. Maybe Microsoft Store tabs can be useful when you are looking for something and want to compare multiple apps. A tabbed UI is coming soon to File Explorerit could therefore also arrive on the Microsoft Store (very unlikely).
6. Add a better section for change logs – 100+ upvotes.
   The Microsoft Store has a section called “What’s new in this release”, but it only shows the latest update details, and many developers don’t use it. Unless the app has a built-in “What’s New” system, good luck finding out what changed in the latest version, let alone checking for older versions.
7. Add date of last update – 100+ upvotes.
   Technically, Microsoft responded to these comments. The new Microsoft Store website launched by Microsoft in March 2022 allows you to see the date of the last update. Unfortunately, very few Windows users are aware of this website, and the only date given by the Microsoft Store is the release date. But do you care when Facebook released its app? It’s one of the many basic things Microsoft should have figured out over the ten years of running its App Store.
8. Auto-update settings per app – 40+ upvotes.
   It might not seem so important or obvious, but the suggestion to add automatic updates per app makes some sense. The Microsoft Store now hosts all sorts of apps, including WSL and Windows Terminal, and auto-updating these apps can terminate processes running in the background without warning. This is also already possible in the Google Play Store.
9. Make the store less confusing – multiple posts.
   When you open the Microsoft Store section in Feedback Hub, the first thing you see is a massive list of users complaining about encrypted errors, such as 0x80070005 and the like. Don’t even try to google how to fix them, let alone what these errors mean. The only somewhat reasonable error message we’ve seen in the Microsoft Store is “Something went wrong on our end”, which isn’t helpful either.
10. Better indication of in-app purchases – multiple posts.
    The Microsoft Store does not allow you to preview in-app purchases offered by a particular app. Of course, you can’t list all IAPs (some apps and games have hundreds), but you can provide an overview (Apple’s App Store lets you see subscriptions and in-app purchases on a list of shops). This would help users better understand what they are about to download and stay away from projects with overly aggressive monetization.

The Microsoft Store is a much better and friendlier place than ever for developers. The most recent policy changes are attracting new developers and populating the store with popular, previously unavailable apps. With more users getting more apps from the Microsoft Store, Microsoft needs to address some core features that are still unavailable in its market. If the business needs some inspiration, they can simply launch Feedback Hub and open the Microsoft Store section.

What do you think of this list? Do these comments make sense to you, or do you think other Microsoft Store features should take priority?