Adobe Acrobat Reader DC drops onto the new Windows 11 Microsoft Store

Windows 11 Storenew Dark Surfacebook
Windows 11 Storenew Dark Surfacebook (Image credit: Daniel Rubino / Windows Central)

What you need to know

  • Adobe released its Acrobat Reader DC app onto the new Windows 11 Microsoft Store.
  • The app is a full-featured x86 viewer for signing and sharing PDFs.
  • Acrobat Reader DC is just the latest of many "classic" Win32 apps appearing in the new store thanks to Microsoft's relaxed policies.

With Microsoft's new Store for Windows 11 comes looser restrictions on the types of apps allowed to appear. Even though it has only been a few days since the Store went live in the latest Insider preview for Windows 11, several classic apps have already appeared, including OBS Studio, Zoom, Canva, Microsoft Edge extensions, and WinZip.

Now, as spotted on our Discord channel, Adobe has brought its full x86 Acrobat Reader DC app to the Microsoft Store.

Source: Windows Central (Image credit: Source: Windows Central)

Acrobat Reader DC is a free, full-featured app for "viewing, printing, signing, sharing, and annotating PDFs" and is considered the gold standard if you deal a lot with PDFs. While Adobe has other apps like Adobe Reader Touch on the store for Windows 10, it is a bit more basic and much older going back to the Windows 8 days back in 2012.

Even though Acrobat Reader DC goes back years for Adobe, it is also regularly updated, usually for security and continuous support, with the latest appearing on June 8.

Because of how the new Microsoft Store works, the version listed is the latest from Adobe as it comes from the company direct. Indeed, updates for this app won't go through the Microsoft Store at all. Instead, it is all handled via the app as it can ping Adobe's servers just as if you had installed it from their website.

There are still at least four months before Windows 11 is released, which leaves plenty of time for even more apps to appear. It'll be interesting to watch to see which other ones show up in the coming weeks.

Thanks, GeoffEff and Coellito, for the tip.

Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central. He is also the head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007, when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and watches. He has been reviewing laptops since 2015 and is particularly fond of 2-in-1 convertibles, ARM processors, new form factors, and thin-and-light PCs. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.