Microsoft is killing the Windows Paint 3D app after 8 years

Microsoft announced that the Paint 3D graphics app will be discontinued later this year and removed from the Microsoft Store in November.

The 3D graphics program was first unveiled as a replacement for the Paint application eight years ago, in November 2016, with the release of Windows 10 Insider Build 14971.

The company advises users to switch to Paint and Photos to view and edit 2D images and 3D Viewer to view 3D content after its removal.

“Paint 3D is deprecated and will be removed from the Microsoft Store on November 4, 2024. Existing installations of Paint 3D will continue to work, but the app will no longer be available for download from the Microsoft Store,” Microsoft said.

“If you remove the app, you can reinstall it from the Microsoft Store until November 4, 2024. After that date, Paint 3D will no longer be available for download. Paint 3D was preinstalled on some Windows 10 devices, but wasn’t preinstalled on Windows 11 devices.”

While introduced years ago as a more modern Paint app and pre-installed on some Windows 10 devices, Paint 3D’s deprecation is unsurprising, given that it was never a default application on Windows 11.

Furthermore, Microsoft has added new features to Paint over the past year, including a Photoshop-like background removal tool, support for layers and image transparency, and an AI-powered image generation feature known as Paint Cocreator.

The Paint 3D end-of-support announcement comes after Redmond revealed five years ago that the classic Windows Paint application would be deprecated and removed with the release of the Windows 10 Fall Creator’s Update in July 2017.

However, after an outpouring of love for the app, Redmond decided not to kill it entirely but to make it available for download through the Microsoft Store.

Last year, the company also announced that it was deprecating the WordPad basic text-editing application and began killing off the Cortana voice-based assistant in Windows 11 Canary preview builds released in early August 2023.