How to find apps in Windows Store that don't show in the results
Windows Store is the place to find, download and install applications for the Windows operating system.
It shipped initially with Windows 8 and will also be available in the upcoming operating system Windows 10.
As you may know, I run a weekly series over at Betanews in which I review new apps and games released for the Windows operating system.
I use the search in Windows Store quite often to find games and apps that I want to take a closer look at, and that works fine most of the time.
Sometimes however search won't return results even though I know that a game or app with that name exists.
One example that I ran into today. When I search for TvTracker in the store, no results are found. But the app exists which you can verify on the Windows apps website.
Since there is no option to click on a link on that website to install the app on Windows right away, you can only use Windows Store to find that app.
But how do you find an app that is not found by search when you search for its exact name?
I don't know really why search won't find apps or games sometimes. Windows Store is not offering the best search experience anyway since results are often filled with items that are barely related to what you have been searching for.
Back to the initial issue. There is only one option as far as I know to reveal apps in store that are not listed when you search for the exact name, and that is to search for the exact company name.
It sounds strange but when you search for a company name, all apps by that company are listed. This returns all apps by that company including the one that you cannot find when you search for the apps' name. So, if you search for Madnight Software on Windows Store, TvTracker is displayed as a result.
Other workarounds may work at times. In the case of TvTracker for example, searching for Tv Tracker will reveal the app and several others. While this may work at times, there is no guarantee that it will always work.
Microsoft needs to improve search in Windows Store to resolve the issue. It can be a frustrating experience to search for something that you know exists but don't get any result in the store.
There’s another workaround to the maddening epic failure of Windows Sore search, which is to search from the Windows Store web site. The only way I found to link directly to the search page was to use the address string returned for the results page. In my case I searched for “*” (an asterisk) and book marked the resulting address string .
Interesting, thanks!
Just use Google search.
AFAIK, you can’t get Metro/Modern apps for Windows anywhere but the Microsoft App Store.
Well that’s OK. I don’t want them.
The state of products from Microsoft (and Nintendo) has been so bad for so long that they have lost any support I had for them.
I never understood the reason for the “Windows Store”. We’ve gotten along all these years finding and downloading everything we need from the internet without MS interference. It seems unnecessary bloat at best, monster advertising built into your system at worst. How about this: An OS without Windows Store but the ability to download it for free if you want it.
Microsoft saw how much money Apple and Google were making with the iTunes Store and Google Play, and decided they wanted a cut of users’ money when buying apps. So when they decided to create the Metro/Modern UI apps API (to slowly merge Windows Phone, Windows RT, and Windows Metro), they also decided the only way to get apps for them was through a Microsoft Store…you submit your apps to Microsoft, then Microsoft sells them and MS gets a cut.
Apple has since launched an app store for Mac as well. :p
Same of course applies to Windows Phone Store. It’s amazing how a company could cock-up a search like this, but then again, it’s Microsoft, who has alienated their own users from doing OS updates because those are so dodgy nowadays.
Hi Martin,any chance you can have a closer look at those two open source android apps :https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eolwral.osmonitor&hl=en
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.elsdoerfer.android.autostarts&hl=en