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I have windows 8.1 and right now Visual Studio 2015 is installing on my machine. Can I develop universal windows apps UWA for windows 10 from my windows 8.1 ? If worth mentioning, I have another machine with windows 10 at home, and I think I read somewhere before I can use the other machine remotely to test my apps but I have been looking without finding how to do so.

Jay Zuo
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Mohe TheDreamy
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  • Possible duplicate of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30317848/run-windows-10-universal-apps-on-windows-8-1 – Victory Jessie Jun 15 '16 at 06:05
  • Yeah, you are right. You can develop Universal Windows apps with Visual Studio 2015 on Windows 8.1 and test them on a remote Windows 10 device. However for developing Windows Universal Apps, Windows 10 is strongly recommended. For more info, please check my answer. – Jay Zuo Jun 16 '16 at 09:29

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Actually, this is possible. We can develop Universal Windows apps with Visual Studio 2015 on Windows 8.1 and test them on a remote Windows 10 device.

For more info, please see Requirements in Develop apps for the Universal Windows Platform (UWP)

Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 support

If you choose to develop Universal Windows apps with Visual Studio 2015 on a platform other than Windows 10, these are the restrictions:

  • Windows 8.1: You can’t run the app locally (only on a remote Windows 10 device). You can use the emulators in Visual Studio, but not the simulator.
  • Windows 7: You can’t run the app locally (only on a remote Windows 10 device). You can’t use the emulators or the simulator in Visual Studio either.

And for test on remote devices, please see Specifying a remote device in Deploying and debugging Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps.

However, when using OS earlier than Windows 10, some Visual Studio features for Windows Universal development may be degraded, such as you can't use the XAML designer on Windows 8.1:
enter image description here

For a better experience of developing Windows Universal Apps, Windows 10 is strongly recommended.

Jay Zuo
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  • ok, if it works, you should request an update of the documentation – magicandre1981 Jun 16 '16 at 14:28
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    @magicandre1981 Thanks for your feedback. Although we can use Windows 8.1 to develop UWP apps, we still need Windows 10 devices for testing. The Get started document is a instruction for those who are new to UWP apps. It suggest them use Windows 10 for better experiences. For the requirements of developing UWP apps, please refer to the [Requirements](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn975273.aspx#Anchor_0) in MSDN. :) – Jay Zuo Jun 17 '16 at 01:52
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This is not possible. You need Windows 10 to develop Windows 10 UWP apps.

1. Get Windows 10

To develop UWP apps, you need the latest version of Windows.

magicandre1981
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