Best Windows apps this week
Four-hundred-forty-eight in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.
Microsoft revealed this week that its DirectStorage API is coming to Windows 10 as well (not just Windows 11 as originally announced). The API improves game loading times on NVMe storage devices significantly.
Windows 10 and 11 systems may be affected by an elevation of privilege vulnerability caused by too permissive rights of core system files.
As always, if I've missed an app or game that has been released this week that you believe is particularly good, let me know in the comments below or notify me via email.
Discounts this week
The following list is a selection of the best deals. Make sure you check out the Store for all offers.
Some apps are discounted for more than one week. Only new apps and games are listed below. Check out the previous post in the series for past offers that may still be valid.
- Britannica World Encyclopedia, for $4.79
- Duplicate Cleaner Pro by Disko, for $4.99
- StaffPad, music notation software, for $59.99
- TaskbarX, taskbar enhancements, for $0.99
- X410, X Window server, for $9.99
New Windows apps
OpenWSL is a small tool for Windows 10 and 11 devices to open files in Linux apps directly from the Windows system. The application adds a context menu Open to Windows; all it takes then is to right-click on a compatible file type and select the open in WSL option.
The Windows Subsystem for Linux needs to be installed on the device for the application to work.
ThisIsWin11 is a small tool for Microsoft's Windows 11 operating system that highlights some of the new features of the operating system to users.
It includes some tweaks next to that to remove certain features, e.g. built-in apps or OneDrive. The app is open source and a work in progress.
Windows Thumbnail Generator is designed for Microsoft's Windows 11 operating system. Windows 11 does not display folder thumbnails by default anymore, and this small tool generates thumbnails for the folders that you select.
The app uses ImageMagick to compose media thumbnails and generates desktop.ini files to set these as the thumbnail.
Notable updates
Microsoft Teams chat is being rolled out on Windows 11.