The Best Universal Windows 10 Apps for 2021

The smallest sibling among Adobe’s several photo applications, Express offers basic image editing along with several special effects and corrections. On mobile devices, getting all of its capabilities requires a subscription, but the UWP app is completely free (though it lacks some tools found in the Android and iOS versions). Instead, you merely have to put up with a little button promoting the company’s excellent Lightroom photo workflow application.

This app basically turns your PC into an Amazon Echo. You can even set it to listen for a wake word (I like using “Computer” for this, as it has a fun retro feel). Control your home devices, get factual answers, the weather or even some humor or daily affirmation to brighten your day. Of course, all the usual privacy caveats apply about having a large corporation privy to your conversations. One good thing about having Alexa on your PC instead is that it’s less likely to be always listening!

You can use this with a standard Prime account, but for it to really shine you need an Amazon Music Unlimited subscription ($7.99 per month). That ups the number of streamable songs from 2 million to 70 million. A third option, Amazon Music HD ($12.99 per month) gets your tunes in the highest quality available, that is, 24-bit 192kHz—which is a higher resolution than a CD’s 44.1kHz, also known as FLAC. The same app handles all these services, and it’s extremely well designed. Strangely, however, I was unable to cast music from this app to my Alexa devices, even though doing so from the Spotify UWP app was no problem.

If you’re on a train or plane with your Windows tablet, you certainly want to watch shows and movies on it, and Amazon’s Prime video brings a huge library to quench that thirst. You get all the standard Prime video fare such as Amazon Originals, but you also get free content from IMDB, paid new in-theater release rentals and purchases (even up to 4K quality!) and any premium channels you subscribe to through Prime Video—think HBO, Showtime, and the like. You can watch trailers, and even get some live news and streaming sports content. The dark interface is clear, complete, and well designed.

This very up-to-date UWP apps lets you view and annotate PDFs, with excellent stylus or touch input options. You can highlight documents, add shapes, or write with pressure sensitive digital ink. Add bookmarks and keywords to documents. The interface is very flexible. The Pro paid account ($6.99 per month) adds features for technical drawing like calibrated measurements and a protractor and lets you merge, re-order, manipulate and arrange PDFs.

Facebook Messenger is one of our favorite messaging apps: Not only is it fairly unique in not requiring your phone number, but it offers all the fun frippery you get on mobile messaging apps. Unlike WhatsApp’s store app, it does support voice and video calling (even group video chat rooms), and you can garnish your messages with stickers and GIFs. I’m also pleased that it supports not only dark and light mode, but also offers gray and high-contrast modes. Multiple users accounts? Not a problem.

Get a personalized, slick news magazine from a whole host of sources. The Windows app could use some attention from the developers, but it does let you swipe through your pages with a flick of the finger, just as you can in the mobile apps. Other options include editing your profile and enabling notifications.

Hulu presents a fine selection of watchable fare, and you can even sign up for the (pricey) live TV streaming option. Unfortunately, unlike Netflix or Amazon Prime, you’ll have to sit through commercials even for on-demand shows. Aside from that, the Hulu app is a strong entry, letting you add to your “stuff,” Like or Dislike, and record shows. You also get picture-in-picture and full subtitle support. The well-designed app even supports Dark mode and multiple profiles.

Many of the younger set have moved on from Facebook to the social networks photo-centric app, Instagram. While its functionality and options are limited compared with the doyen of social networks, sometimes limitations turn out to be strengths. Unfortunately, the app no longer works as a share target for the standard Windows sharing dialog. You can still do all the things inside the app itself: posting, following, liking, messaging, and watching stories. The app supports notifications and switching between multiple accounts, but not dark mode.

Everybody’s favorite streaming service to chill with offers an excellent Windows 10 UWP app. A highlight feature is its ability to download shows for offline watching—say your getting on a plane with your Surface Pro. The interface is as clear as it gets, so you can start streaming Bridgerton or The Crown or pick up where you left off with whatever series you binge on at the moment.

This app offers myriad ways to edit your photos. You can work on pictures from your camera roll or online accounts. It's a snap to add text, clipart, and endless effects to photos, or even start drawing from scratch. Collage creation is one of this app's strengths, too, as are templates for social posts. You even get Photoshop-style selection, masking, and tone curve adjustments. And there are enough filters to put Instagram to shame, including impressive AI artistic style transfers. Blemish fixing, blur effects—it's the whole nine yards of photo manipulation. Unfortunately, you can only upload JPG, PNG, and BMP image formats—no TIFF or raw camera formats.

The Pinterest UWP app garners a rare 5-star rating on the Microsoft Store, with a respectable 2,000 reviews. Indeed, it is a well-designed app with a big search box atop and clear buttons for Home, Today, and Following. You can use the card-based social interest service’s chat, tune your feed, and choose what activities you want notifications for. You can even upload bulk pins in a CSV file. Of course, you can also add your own new pins directly in the app with images, links, and text.

Many users are fleeing WhatsApp for fear of sharing marketing data with Facebook, instead heading for privacy-focused services like Signal and Telegram. Both have produced Windows 10 store apps that are arguably better than that of the biggest player in the space, WhatsApp. Aside from text messaging with stickers and GIFs, Signal lets you make voice and video calls—things you can’t do in WhatsApp’s UWP app. You also get night mode, group chats, voice messages, multiple account support, and end-to-end encryption. And it’s all free!

For good or bad, businesses that don’t use Microsoft Teams usually use Slack. The store app for this workplace communication tool pretty much duplicates the web experience, but you do get the benefit of integrated notifications in the Action Center, and not having everything in browser tabs provides you with a clearer separation. I also like that the app uses a Notification Area (formerly known as the System Tray) icon for anytime access. In another helpful touch, the icon turns red if you have a message waiting.

Our Editors’ Choice music streaming service provides an excellent Windows 10 UWP app—one that I use daily. Get automatically curated playlists or create your own. Play on-demand any just about music that's ever been recorded (if you’re a premium subscriber), listen to podcasts, and see what your friends are listening to. One of the coolest things about the Spotify app is that it lets you send tunes to any device signed into your account.

Now that the headline social network is a bit more civil, think about getting its Windows 10 app. It supports multiple accounts, and most importantly for me, it’s a share target in Windows’ standard share panel. That means I can tweet a website from Edge with minimal fuss, no extension required, or post a photo from Windows’ default Photos app. Other than that, the interface mimics the web interface, offering all the Twitter things you’d ever want to do.

A true UWP app, VLC runs on Xboxes (X, S, and One), HoloLens, PC, mobile device, and Surface Hub. It not only lets you watch pretty much any video format (including MKV, MPEG, and MOV), but also plays music, for which you get an equalizer with presets for genres like Classical and Reggae. For video, you can choose to take advantage of Windows 10’s PiP mode and to use hardware acceleration.  The Network page lets you play internet streams in HLS, MMS or RTSP format, the last of which is commonly used in security cameras and live streaming webcams.