WSABuilds

Despite Microsoft’s valiant efforts, the industry giant’s ambitious plans of slowly building a hardware and software ecosystem that rivals Apple’s walled-garden approach were foiled when the mobile version of their flagship operating system failed to attract the necessary developers for establishing a solid app store.

However, a part of the late platform lives on through Windows’ flexibility and touch-friendly UI, which complements the newly introduced Windows Subsystem for Android, an excellent way of running mobile apps from the Google Play Store, when installed through WSABuilds.

In seeing the discrepancy between their cross-platform app store and Apple’s or Google’s counterparts, Microsoft began working on a way to bring Android apps to Windows Mobile, known as Project Astoria.

While this emulation layer was not enough to save the OS, it would pave the way for WSA’s implementation within Windows 11, which officially seems to support only Amazon’s App Store out of the box.

Thanks to the commendable dedication of the open-source community, tech-savvy volunteers took it upon themselves to fill in the gaps with specialized packages condensed into a repository known as WSABuilds. From here, users who want access to Google Play Services without extra tinkering can download the relevant archive.

Moreover, those who prefer the look and feel of Windows 10 and wish to keep using it until Microsoft fully ceases support for it can download a compatible set of binaries from the repository without having to transition to Windows 11.

Given the way in which the bundled batch file operates, users simply have to ensure their device meets the necessary minimum set of requirements before commencing the installation process of the WSABuilds binaries that meet your needs.