Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system bridges the gap between users of the Windows 8 touch user interface and traditional desktop style users who have been isolated by mobile-inspired design. In many ways, it has the best of both worlds, with powerful and traditional desktop apps, as well as mobile-style apps with touch usability, clean design, social media features, and navigation in mind. Check out 20 of our favorite Windows 10 apps available in the Microsoft Store below.
Evernote Touch
Evernote’s cross-platform note-taking app lets you save notes, photos, and videos and sync them across multiple platforms and devices for easy reference, allowing you to access your notes, ideas, and important information anywhere you have a data connection. Users can organize their notes and files into notebooks for easy access, while tags allow you to quickly search for keywords. Evernote Touch, available on the Microsoft Store, features an interface designed with touch in mind.
Flipboard takes the idea behind classic feed readers and gives them a very visual, magazine-like feel. Simply subscribe to a variety of categories or check out your favorite websites, and Flipboard brings you a personalized magazine filled with the content you’re looking for. This app allows you to add content to your News Feed, as well as browse custom reading lists created by other Flipboard users. In addition to news and articles, you can link it to your favorite social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ to view your social media streams from within the app.
One of the best and most popular services, which arguably gave birth to the cloud storage boom, Dropbox is the perfect solution for many online storage and sharing needs. At its core, Dropbox is a web locker for files, documents, photos, and other data that you can access anywhere (in addition to downloading for offline access). You can also use Dropbox as a way to share files in order to collaborate or upload new materials.
LastPass removes the pain of remembering all of your passwords and login credentials by storing your user details and passwords as an encrypted file behind your master password. The Windows Store app lets you manage a personal password vault, complete with autofill and quick login to a variety of websites, as well as a built-in password generator. Premium subscribers get more features, such as unlimited password vault syncing across multiple devices and improved multi-factor authentication support. It’s also worth noting that since Microsoft’s new Edge browser doesn’t support add-ons yet, LastPass Windows offers a handy option for managing passwords.
VLC for Windows Store
VLC has a reputation for being an all-in-one media player that can play almost anything on it with minimal fuss and maximum configuration. Now that same audiovisual franchise is coming to the Microsoft Store with VLC for the Windows Store, which brings a modern user interface to the VLC experience. VLC will play almost anything, from audio files to video files, as well as more complex formats like OGG, FLAC, and MKV. While desktop purists are more likely to stick with classic VLC, Windows users looking for a great media player that also fits the modern aesthetic while including powerful backend features now have a great option available to them.
Netflix
The official Netflix app offers subscribers an incredible wealth of TV shows and movies that can be streamed and viewed on demand on your Windows desktop or tablet. Users can browse thousands of episodes and movies, add reviews and ratings, and search for recommended and relevant titles. In addition, the Netflix apps allow you to start watching on one device and then resume watching on another almost easily.
kindle
Amazon’s Kindle app is an all-in-one bookstore and e-book reading app, featuring a library of over a million titles across every literary genre easily purchased within the app. Customizable features like background color, font size, columns, notes, and highlighting make it easy to configure the reading experience to your liking, and syncing across devices lets you pick up where you left off on any device running the app.
While we doubt we’ll see a full Halo game on PC for a while, desktop players can still explore parts of the Halo saga with Halo: Spartan Strike, the sequel to Spartan Assault’s top-down shooter. Players don Spartan armor and take on the enemies of humanity, from the vengeful Covenant fanatics to the mysterious Prometheans. Battle your way through 30 mission campaigns spanning the length and breadth of Halo’s history, from the historic Battle of New Mombasa to Gamma Halo. Each mission brings new challenges like Promethean enemies and weapons, as well as familiar readiness systems like Bubble Shield and an arsenal of UNSC weapons and vehicles. The cool bonus is that Spartan Strike achievements can unlock exclusive rewards in Halo: Master Chief Collection on Xbox One.
Sometimes you don’t need a very sophisticated and complex photo editing toolset when all you want to do is scan some red-eye and fix the colors. Adobe Photoshop Express acts as an entry-level photo-editing application, and provides useful photo-editing features built into the free application. Auto-fix and one-touch filters provide quick adjustments, while slider controls provide more precise adjustments for contrast, exposure, shadows, and more. Additional filters, features, and photo utilities can also be used with in-app purchases, but the stock package is really great for basic editing like red-eye correction, cropping, and more.
modern paint
Not to be confused with the older MS Paint, Fresh Paint is a neat drawing app for Windows devices that work with a mouse or touchscreen with equal confidence. The application’s drawing engine simulates the analog effects of a brush on paint, complete with blending effects and a virtual color palette for blending your colors. Fresh Paint users can start from scratch or paint in images and templates. A variety of paid and free art packages add additional paint features and images.
Wunderlist is a popular and powerful to-do list app that offers great features for free and premium users alike. It’s a smart and efficient to-do list app, on par with simple grocery lists all the way to detailed daily itineraries and project work tasks. Users can share lists with friends and colleagues, attach photos and files, set custom reminders, and organize your tasks and notes.
Wolfram Alpha is more than just a search engine. The app’s computational knowledge engine is a wizard when it comes to answering questions on a variety of knowledge areas, from mathematics, statistics, physics, and earth sciences. If you’re looking for an answer to a question that’s covered under the hard sciences, Wolfram Alpha is a great tool for finding the right answer and learning more about the field.
Similar to last year’s impressive Hitman GO, Lara Croft GO has reimagined the classic action platformer Tomb Raider as a turn-based puzzle board game. Guide Lara Croft through ancient ruins in search of forgotten treasures and uncover the mystery behind the Queen of Poison. Lara Croft GO deviates from the simplicity of Hitman GO, with various animations and sound effects to provide a feel of a pulp adventure, all while retaining the challenging puzzle gameplay of the GO series as you lead Lara Croft around perilous traps and outwit enemies.
ESPN
The ESPN app for Windows provides sports fans with everything they need to know about national and international sports news and events in one place. Keep up to date with accurate tabs on scores and breaking news, listen to ESPN broadcasts, and keep up to date with our live start lists. Some content is hidden behind ESPN Insider’s paywall, but even free content will give sports fans and armchair coaches plenty to work with.
Shogun Skulls ($4.49)
One of the most popular Windows Store games, Skulls of the Shogun combines some solid turn-based strategy games with an eccentric cartoonish take on Japanese mythology. As the traitorous General Akamoto has recently arrived in the afterlife, it is entirely up to you to raise hell by assembling an army of fallen spirits to stand against the traitorous minions. The campaign’s 20 levels present a good challenge, with local and online multiplayer also available.
Radio TuneIn
Whoever said radio is dead wasn’t listening to TuneIn Radio, which gives listeners access to more than 60,000 radio stations worldwide, as well as millions of on-demand programs and podcasts. Users can search for a variety of content, from local radio stations, favorite artists, bands, comedians or talk show hosts, as well as big-name channels like ESPN, BBC, CBS and more. An additional neat feature of the app is the ability to pin your favorite channels to the Start Menu for easy access.
Music Maker Jam is a fun little software game that lets you turn your Windows tablet or PC into a small music mixing studio. Using a simple system of sliders and buttons, Music Maker Jam allows you to create instant music creations in a variety of different styles, from dubstep and hiphop to techno, house, ambient music and more. The app lets you choose from a variety of free patterns, with new ones available as in-app purchases.
The second screen app revolution is an interesting trend in media and gaming consumption, and among the avant-garde in the package is the Xbox One Smartglass, which lets you use your Windows device or desktop as a remote control and a second screen for your Xbox One. Smartglass lets you view additional information about games, TV shows, movies, and other media, while also letting you manage your Xbox browser and Xbox Live account details from your Windows 8 PC or tablet. There’s also a version of Smartglass for Xbox 360.
The official Twitter app on Windows brings the Twitter experience to the desktop, with the benefits of a native app plus a familiar web style interface. Post your own tweets, follow fun sounds online, upload photos, videos and comments. The app is in constant development, with new features including support for multiple Twitter accounts, and a “Lists” feature to organize the people you follow for a more personalized news feed.
Khan Academy
Khan Academy aims to provide “a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere.” To that end, this company hosts thousands of free online educational videos for a variety of subjects, from biology, chemistry, physics, and math from K-12 to history, civics, and computer programming. An adaptive testing system allows learners to practice at their own pace, while a stats and badges tracking system provides useful metrics as well as a likable element of learning.
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