How the Hosted App Model of Windows 10 build 2004 works

Did you know the Windows 10 May 2020 Update introduced a Hosted App Model? If not, MSPowerUser has a brief article about what makes this new feature to great.

The hosted app technology enables apps to declare themselves as host for other applications, while allowing those apps to have fully independent identities. Basically, a script can use Powershell as its host, or a web app can use Chrome as it host. These apps then have their own icon, an entry in the Task Manager and Task Switches, and the ability to be installed and uninstalled via default Windows 10 methods.

A great example is the new Your Phone Apps feature, which allows apps to be streamed from your phone to your PC:

There the Your Phone app can act as a host, and create Hosted Apps which are mere pointers to apps which are being streamed from your phone to your PC, but which can still be pinned to the Task Bar or Start Menu.

The feature successfully blurs the line between apps on your device and apps running from the cloud, and makes such differences redundant.

There are rumors that Microsoft will use this feature to run win32 apps on Windows 10X, or deliver enterprise apps from the cloud to end-users.