Microsoft Stores for Education and Business will be retired in 2023

Say goodbye.

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What you need to know

The party’s over for fans of the Microsoft Store for Education and Microsoft Store for Business. If you liked these things, stay on Windows 10 and enjoy them until they’re forcibly retired in the first quarter of 2023. And if you make the jump toWindows 11before then, know that these two Microsoft Stores aren’t supported on the new operating system at all.

The point of these stores was to allow for specific apps to be distributed within organizations outside of the standardMicrosoft Store. However, Microsoft’s not simply abandoning the features of the stores. The tech giant comes bearing gifts in exchange for what it’s taking away from users.

“You can still centrally manage apps and deploy them to your Windows 10—and, later this year, Windows 11—endpoints,” readsMicrosoft’s blog poston the subject. Windows Package Manager will facilitate these operations.

These capabilities are set to arrive in a preview capacity during the first half of 2022, with a standard release set for the second half of the year. All dates are subject to change.

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Robert Carnevale is the News Editor for Windows Central. He’s a big fan of Kinect (it lives on in his heart), Sonic the Hedgehog, and the legendary intersection of those two titans, Sonic Free Riders. He is the author ofCold War 2395. Have a useful tip? Send it to robert.carnevale@futurenet.com.