Building Applications for Windows 8 in Visual Studio 2015

Question

I recently migrated from Windows 8 / VS2013 to Windows 10 / VS2015. After that, I can no longer create applications for storing Windows 8 - I have to upgrade to Windows 8.1 if I want to build a project.

However, I support two builds of my application - one for Windows 8 and one for 8.1. I have several clients who refuse to upgrade to 8.1 (no, I don’t know why), and I don’t want to leave them with an outdated version. I have already updated the project to 8.1 and saved it separately.

Is there a way to create a Windows 8.0 application in Visual Studio 2015 without a forced update?

Answer 1

Visual Studio 2015 does not support creating applications for the Windows 8 Store. As you indicated, they will only carry them up to 8.1. You must use VS2013 to support the Windows 8 Store applications, and you can use VS 2012 only to create new ones.

This is described on the Visual Studio 2015 compatibility support page.

https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/visual-studio-2015-compatibility-vs.aspx