Microsoft is Killing Paint 3D in November

In 2016, Microsoft was plotting to exchange the OG Paint app in Home windows with a brand new Paint 3D app. At the moment, that app is useless. My solely remorse is that it ever occurred within the first place: I nonetheless use Paint each single day, and whereas it went by means of a darkish interval throughout a years-long modernization, it’s extra helpful and usable immediately than it’s ever been.

Paint 3D? Not a lot.

Paint 3D debuted in 2017, however we wrote about it first on Thurrott.com in October 2016, when it seemed to be a radical redesign of the unique Paint app, which dates again to Paintbrush in Home windows 1.0 from 1985. (Technically, it dates again to 1984, as Home windows Paintbrush was a licensed model of ZSoft PC Paintbrush, which debuted as a PC-based various to MacPaint one yr earlier. However let’s not get sidetracked right here.) Paint 3D was a key element in Microsoft’s ill-fated “Creator” sequence of updates to Home windows 10, and it stands as a key instance of why the UWP app wave was all the time going to fail. Just like the Fisher-Value Metro/Trendy apps that preceded it, Paint 3D was a canine, a simplistic-looking app that centered on use circumstances few wanted whereas not offering the wealthy performance of its predecessor.

Extremely, Microsoft indicated in 2017 that it could take away the unique Paint in a coming Home windows 10 replace and change it with Paint 3D. The plan on the time was to carry Paint to the Microsoft Retailer in order that followers might nonetheless entry the app, however prospects had been so upset that it rapidly reversed course. (“It should stay in Home windows 10 for now,” a Microsoft consultant stated in a usually ham-handed assertion of that period.)

By 2019, Paint 3D, like the opposite 3D apps in experiences in Home windows 10, had failed. And so Microsoft did the surprising: It admitted it could maintain Paint in Home windows for good, it deprecated Paint 3D after which didn’t embody it with Home windows 11. After which it–extremely–started modernizing Paint to carry its person interface into the trendy period.

That didn’t go nicely at first: The preliminary Paint refresh was horrible, it ignored the darkish and lightweight themes in Home windows 10/11 and offered only a stark white interface, and Microsoft someway managed to kill keyboard navigation. And Microsoft inexplicably let it sit unfixed like that till early 2023, when a random replace made the app even worse. Lastly, in mid-2023, Microsoft corrected the problems with Paint, implementing correct darkish/mild mode assist. And it’s up to date the app a number of instances since then, including options like Background Removing, layers and transparency, and Picture Creator. These with Copilot+ PCs can even entry a singular Crocreator function that makes use of the PC’s NPU and native AI fashions.

However the perfect change to Paint was when the “Open in Paint 3D” button was faraway from the app’s toolbar (a pretend ribbon that takes up an excessive amount of area and isn’t collapsible).

Up to now, Paint 3D has been obtainable in Home windows 10 and the Microsoft Retailer for its few customers. However now, that’s over: A brand new informational banner within the app tells customers that “Paint 3D received’t be obtainable within the Microsoft Retailer or obtain updates beginning on November 4, 2024.” So it’s shifting from deprecated and eliminated to being unsupported and useless. I’m simply unhappy it took so lengthy: Paint 3D was emblematic of so many errors, the worst of which was believing that it might someway change Paint.

However Microsoft hasn’t misplaced its ability for miscommunication: The hyperlink within the app brings you to a Microsoft Study web page about deprecated options in Home windows. That doesn’t point out Paint 3D in any respect. It’s the right ending.