In May 2023, Microsoft launched a new Windows 11 app for developers called Dev Home that helped streamline the setup process of a development environment, making it easy to install multiple different coding tools and even link sync with Github repositories to make managing and coding for projects easier.
Unfortunately, it appears Microsoft is now planning to deprecate the app, less than two years after it first launched. An app update appears to be introducing a deprecation banner along the top of the interface that reads:
“Dev Home will be going away in May 2025 and a subset of its features will be moved to new places. Stay tuned for more information in the following months.”
The message doesn’t say which parts of the app will survive the culling, or where they’ll end up. It just mentions that the Dev Home app as a whole will be going away in May 2025, meaning developers who use this app will need to look for alternatives soon.
In addition to being a tool for developers, the app also introduced handy system widgets that let users pin CPU, RAM, and GPU usage to the Windows 11 Widgets Board. When announced, Microsoft described the app as the following:
“Dev Home is a new experience in Windows 11 that gets you back in the zone and streamlines your workflow with features such as WinGet configuration for easier and faster setup, Dev Drive for enhanced filesystem performance and a new customizable dashboard to track all your workflows and tasks in one place. Dev Home makes it easy to connect to GitHub and set up your machine to code for the repos you care about, easily installing the tools and packages you need. Dev Home can also configure your coding environments in the cloud using Microsoft Dev Box and GitHub Codespaces.”
The app also includes utilities such as a Hosts File Editor and modern Registry File Editor and makes it super easy to setup a virtual environment for app development and testing. Hopefully some of these features survive once the Dev Home app itself is deprecated this summer.
