Microsoft's Classic Paint no longer pencilled for erasure

Microsoft Paint has been in the news since yesterday when Redmond announced that the software is being deprecated with the upcoming Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. News publications all around the world didn’t report the news accurately, claiming that Microsoft is “killing” Paint in Windows 10. But that’s not the case at all.

In a statement to MSPoweruser, Microsoft has confirmed that the company is not killing Microsoft Paint. The image you see above was shared by a Microsoft spokesperson earlier on Monday.

Rather than completely killing Microsoft Paint, Redmond is instead going to bring Microsoft Paint to the Windows Store, allowing fans of the classic Paint app to install the app whenever they want. In fact, Microsoft is also going to build some of the features of the classic Paint app into the new Paint 3D app in the meantime, too.

“MS Paint is not going away. In addition to the new 3D capabilities, many of the MS Paint features people know and love like photo editing and 2D creation are in Paint 3D – the new app for creativity, available for free with the Windows 10 Creators update. In the future, we will offer MS Paint in the Windows Store also for free and continue to provide new updates and experiences to Paint 3D so people have the best creative tools all in one place.”

Microsoft didn’t provide us with a date for the release of Microsoft Paint on the Windows Store, but we’d imagine it’s not too far away and will likely make an appearance shortly after the release of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update later this September/October.