Forum Discussion

Copper Contributor

Dec 14, 2021

Solved

The ms-appinstaller protocol has been disabled.

I just found out that users can no longer install my MSIX from my website. This is a WPF application packaged with "Windows Application Packaging Project" (wapproj). When users click the "Get the app...

Aditi_Narvekar

Dec 15, 2021

bvenhaus Thank you for your question. We removed the ms-appinstaller custom scheme due to a security vulnerability. We do intend to bring this back, and are working on it. For now, you can update the link on your website by removing 'ms-appinstaller:?source='

<html>
    <body>
        <h1> MyApp Web Page </h1>
        <a href="http://mywebservice.azureedge.net/HubApp.msix"> Install app package </a>
        <a href="http://mywebservice.azureedge.net/HubAppBundle.msixbundle"> Install app bundle  </a>
        <a href="http://mywebservice.azureedge.net/HubAppSet.appinstaller"> Install related set </a>
    </body>
</html>

zipswich

Brass Contributor

Jan 05, 2022

Our Microsoft Store app package for sideloading on our website has this issue.
If my understanding is correct, we just need to remove "ms-appinstaller:?source=" in index.html generated by Visual Studio.
In other words:
Change
<a href='ms-appinstaller:?source=https://www.mydomain.com/download/myapp.appinstaller'>
to
<a href='https://www.mydomain.com/download/myapp.appinstaller'>

hrb-2

Brass Contributor

Jan 11, 2022

It would appear this workaround requires end users to download, save, and open the application bundle. This is something we try to drill into there heads that they should not do. It also means that apps that normally automatically update will not be able to do so. Can you imagine Android or iOS disabling auto updates globally??? Unbelievable! As a result this only a partial work-around creates more problems than it solves, especially if updates need to distribute current data with the application. PLEASE MICROSOFT provide guidance on how long it will be before side loading from a web site will be enabled again!!!

27k1isms
Copper Contributor
Jan 12, 2022
I assume the Engineer responsible for this has carried out a thorough risk assessment, taking into account customer impact and loss of service.

This is despicable, can anyone in Microsoft be actually bothered to reply. Also what compenmsation scheme is in place for Microsoft customer.

@hrb-1 PLEASE MICROSOFT provide guidance on how long it will be before side loading from a web site will be enabled again!!!