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Three Steps to Publishing on Windows 11 Devices

Last modified: May 11 2023


Before you hit “Submit App” on your latest app submission, you may have noticed that there’s a new tab in your device support section for “Windows Devices”. When you support Windows 11 devices, your app may become available to delight hundreds of millions of end customers once it passes the app testing and review process.

Based on feedback from Developer Preview participants, here are three useful tips to have a smooth app testing experience:

  1. Make sure you do Live App Testing on Windows 11 devices: One of the most common reasons why apps don’t pass testing for Windows 11 devices is functional failures. Whether that is the app crashing on launch or a button refusing to work, we recommend doing Live App Testing before you submit your app to check out the end customer experience. (It’s also pretty handy to pick up on design changes you might want to make just for Windows 11 devices.)

    Be aware! Your end customers will only have access to the latest retail version of Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA). We recommend doing Live App Testing with the retail version to experience the full end customer journey. Please note that this build needs to be run on a separate Windows 11 device from the WSA Insiders build for developers.

    Don’t forget! When doing Live App Testing, your testers will need to download the test version of your app to their Amazon account via retail web before they access it on the test device(s) in question.

  2. Make sure your app can handle screen resizing and multi-window support: Because Windows 11 devices come in various form factors (desktops, laptops, Surface devices, etc.) and allow for multiple parallel windows at the same time, you will want to make sure your app can handle screen resizing (an app’s ability to function as intended when the app window is resized, minimized, or maximized) and works seamlessly when multiple applications are open. We encourage you to review the technical documentation to learn how to make the necessary adjustments. This helps ensure that even if your customers have to step away temporarily to answer an email or three, their app progress does not get lost before they come back to your app
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  3. Make sure your app knows what to do with keyboard and mouse inputs: While we all are tethered to our smartphones these days, Windows 11 devices have physical keyboard and mouse inputs. You will want to make sure that your end customers, playing on a non-touchscreen device, can still tell your game or app what to do via their keyboard and/or mouse. If you’re not sure how to do this, head over to this technical documentation for some guidance.

Doing a little bit of app testing (and subsequent code tweaking) before you hit “Submit App” for app testing can increase the likelihood that your app will make it onto Windows 11 devices after the Amazon Appstore testing process. (You can find the full compatibility and troubleshooting guide here)

Still have questions about specific features? For general topics, join or start a discussion in the Amazon Developer Forums. If it’s an app-specific question, please raise a “Contact Us” with your App ID and a detailed description of what you need help with.

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