Apps dropping support and leaving the Windows Store is no big news these days. With more and more big names dropping from the Store, it looked like Microsoft had started abandoning the Store too, at least for Mobile users. Most of the UWP apps on Mobile are lagging way behind their PC counterparts and haven’t been updated since months.
One of the glaring example of this situation is the Microsoft Photos app. While the Photos app on Windows 10 PC is great, the Mobile version is still a terrible mess. No new features since February 2017, multitude of bugs and horrible performance, the app is a perfect example of UWP gone wrong. Fortunately somebody has discovered a fix for that.
The new Photos app, though not available for Mobile, is still being compiled for ARM. That means, technically, it will be able to run on Windows 10 Mobile. There will be issues as it is not optimized for the OS, but hey, something’s better than nothing. Right?
Before moving on to the guide, let us warn you. This is not an official procedure, so if you are not sure, don’t read anymore. If you still want to move on, then here it is,
- Open Settings> Update & security> For developers, and select Developer mode.
- Download Interop Tools from this link and install the files in Dependencies>ARM.
- Now download the new Photos app from here and extract the contents into Internal Storage> Documents.
- Make sure to have a extraction software to extract the files, like 8 zip.
- Open Interop Tools and go to General>Applications>Deployment
- Find the Photos entry in the Applications list and delete the one with a library icon. If this doesn’t work, make sure to delete all the other entries for the Photos app too.
- Now go to Register>Browse and navigate to Device>Documents>Photos and select AppxManifest.
- Wait for a few moments and then go check your All Apps list.
You’ll have the new Microsoft Photos app on your Windows 10 Mobile device with all the latest features. It’s not the fastest app, but it works better than the current supported version.
