14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft will discontinue the Reader app early next year, trying to convince users to switch to Microsoft Edge instead.
In a notification displayed to users when launching the latest version of the Reader app, Microsoft explains that support would be pulled in February 2018, and customers won’t be able to use it beyond this date.
“Microsoft is retiring the Reader app on this and later versions of Windows 10 and you will not be to use this app after 15 February 2018. We recommend Microsoft Edge for reading PDF, Windows XPS Viewer for XPS, and Windows Photos app for TIFF files,” Microsoft says in a warning that also includes a link to open the file in Microsoft Edge (via onMSFT).
While it’s awkward that Microsoft recommends users to switch to three different apps just because it kills one tool, it’s believed the Reader app hasn’t been the most widely-used document viewer lately, especially given the Microsoft Edge push in Windows 10.
Launched in 2012 as part of the Windows 8 fiasco
Reader was officially launched in 2012 with Windows 8 and was offered as the default PDF viewer in the operating system. Its place, however, has been taken by Microsoft Edge in Windows 10, as the software giant wanted not only a browser, but also a fully-featured document viewer.
Truth be told, the approximately 5 percent market share that Microsoft Edge has right now shows more people are likely to use it for viewing PDF documents rather than browsing, and this can’t be good news for the company since the goal was competing with Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.
It goes without saying that those who don’t want to stick with Microsoft Edge for viewing PDF documents have lots of other alternatives to choose from, including the super-popular Adobe Acrobat Reader, which in addition to viewing the files also provides a plethora of extra features.