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What is the difference between an .appxupload and an .appxbundle and which one should I upload to the store?

I have just build my application for UWP for the Windows store.

Visual Studio had produced a collection of files. Some of which are:

MyApp.appxupload
MyApp.appxBundle

What is the difference between these two files? and which one should I upload to the store?

Solution

  • What is the difference between these two files? and which one should I upload to the store?

    Both of them can be uploaded to the Store, which is up to your need. See the Package section of submission in Dashboard:

    enter image description here

    .xap can be Windows Phone 8/8.1 Silverlight package format.

    .appx can also be accepted by Dev Center, but for Windows universal app, it won't collect crash analytics experience from Dev Center if you do not include pdb symbol files. The .appxupload file is created as part of the Visual Studio packaging process and contains two other files: .appx and .appxsym. The .appxsym file is a compressed .pdb file containing public symbols of your app used for crash analytics in the Windows Dev Center. That's why we should upload .appxupload file for Store submission.

    The .appxbundle file can reduce the size of the app that users download, which is very meaningful to the package containing language-specific assets, varying image-scale assets, or resources that apply to specific versions of Microsoft DirectX. Users just need to download the part of your package resource that works on their device.

    Besides, with appxbundle, you can directly generate a package for x86, x64 and arm architecture so you don't need to create them one by one. Please note that once you upload .appxbundle as your Store package you're not able to go back to non-appxbundle in your future submission.

    For more details, please read related article in Packaging apps.