Opera browser made its Microsoft Store debut, alongside Yandex browser, when the new Store experience was announced by the Redmond Company in September. Last month, Mozilla joined the competition by releasing Firefox on the store. Now, Opera has put up its gaming-centric browser, Opera GX, on the Microsoft Store.
The browser is available for both Windows 10 and 11. The app is free, and is about 106.2 MB to download, which is about the size of the offline installer of the 64-bit version of the program, that you can find on its website. Opening the About Opera page confirms that the app is indeed the 64-bit version, it matches the latest stable release build, Opera_GX_82.0.4227.44.
Firefox’s Microsoft Store version uses a different user profile, and lets you run the app alongside the standalone desktop version. Opera GX’s store app however, is identical to its regular browse, and uses the same profile. As a matter of fact, the app even shows up in Control Panel’s Program and Features page, if you needed further confirmation about the two versions. Did you know that Microsoft is replacing this screen with the Settings app? Read our previous coverage for more details.
Nevertheless, I gave the Opera GX store app a whirl, and had no issues with it whatsoever. If you’re a regular user, you may want to get it from the Store to keep your browser up-to-date automatically, though the standalone version offers the same convenience. The only advantage is when you are installing the browser from scratch, on a new Windows install, or want to uninstall and reinstall it. You no longer need to use Edge as a middle-man to get Opera’s browser, something which the company itself made fun of on Twitter.
Want to download Opera GX on the Microsoft Store? Well, you will have to open the store app and search for the browser manually. I can’t find the share button on the app’s page, and even the announcement article on Opera’s blog doesn’t have a link to take you to the store listing. So, we can’t provide you a direct link.
It seems a little odd, since all other apps have the share button at the bottom/top of the page. The web store’s search makes it weirder. Here’s what the store’s results will show you when searching for Opera. The app doesn’t pop up in the results, which can only mean it is hidden from browsers, i.e. the result is accessible exclusively from the Store app. And here’s a similar search query for the term Firefox, which displays the proper result. The main Opera browser that was released 3 months ago doesn’t have the share button or the direct link to the store listing either. It’s not going to be a big deal for most users, but if you’d like to check the screenshots, or read the system requirements from your web browser, you can’t do that. Thankfully, the Store’s search function works correctly, which is saying something.
Until recently, the Microsoft Store had been displaying irrelevant results for keywords, notably for the term Firefox, which I highlighted above. The improvements that we have seen recently on the store app certainly make it more tolerable than the previous version, which was clunky at best. It’s certainly interesting to see more desktop programs coming to the Store. We now have Amazon, Epic Games Store, WhatsApp Beta, to name some quality apps that were released recently. Now that Microsoft has opened up the store to support several frameworks, hopefully more developers will bring their creations to the platform.
One change that I would like to see is for the Microsoft Store’s web app to use the same interface as its desktop counterpart. It is not a consistent experience,
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