iTunes tweaks suggest Apple's first Windows 10 app is almost here

Microsoft is still trying to make a go of its Windows Store and its universal Windows 10 apps – those apps that adapt well to different device form factors and which are the only apps you can use on Windows 10 S. New tweaks made to iTunes for Windows suggest a Windows Store version of the mammoth media player is almost here.

Italian site Aggiornamenti Lumia spotted a new ItunesUWP file hidden in the code of the latest version of iTunes for Windows, with UWP standing for Universal Windows Platform – the platform that these specialized Windows 10 apps are built on top of.

Microsoft and Apple have been promising iTunes would make it to the Windows Store since last summer, with the original aim to get it out by the end of the year. As we're now well into 2018, it would seem getting such a huge and bloated program down into a trimmed UWP version is a job that's taken longer than anyone imagined.

Details, details

As for exactly what you'll be able to do in the Windows Store version of iTunes, we're still not sure. Apple Music support is a given, of course, but it's likely that some of the functionality of the full iTunes will get cut so that the software works properly on the stripped-down, lightweight Windows 10 S operating system.

As yet there are no official updates from Microsoft or Apple, so we're still guessing as to when this app might be made available to download, but around March time seems a good bet: that's when the next major update for Windows 10 is expected to come down the pipe.

With users rather restricted in terms of what they can download from the Windows Store at the moment – Windows 10 S forces users to put up with Microsoft Edge and Bing for their web browsing and web searching respectively – we're looking forward to seeing more software made available in the UWP format.