Earlier this year, Microsoft began rolling out new Your Phone features that enabled tighter integration between select Android and Windows devices. Now it looks like the company is setting its sights on something higher than merely mirroring apps across screens — Microsoft reportedly has a new plan to make it easy for Android apps to run directly on Windows.
Called Project Latte, its goal is to enable developers to easily bring their Android apps to Windows 10 with very little extra tinkering required. This supposedly works by utilizing the Windows Subsystem for Linux with an additional Android layer running on top of it. It doesn’t look like Project Latte will support apps that need Google Play Services to work, which means that app support could be limited until developers remove those dependencies.
While this would be a cool move that could dramatically expand the catalog of supported apps on Windows, I wouldn’t hold your breath quite yet. It took Google years to get Android apps working properly on Chrome OS — and even today there aren’t that many Android apps that properly take advantage of that platform’s full capabilities.
Supposedly, Microsoft is developing Project Latte with the goal of announcing it in 2021 and shipping it later that fall, but nothing is set in stone. This wouldn’t be the first time Microsoft’s plans to bring Android apps to Windows have failed. If the company does manage to brew Latte correctly, the timing couldn’t be much more poetic — Google is currently trying to bring Windows apps to Chrome OS users. While you wait for Microsoft to officially announce its plans, why not check out our guide to letting your Android phone work as closely as possible with Windows?
