We received some informal reports in the Microsoft Store reviews telling us that GIMP updates were deleting user data! In particular, plug-ins, themes, brushes, user settings and other add-ons were not being kept during an update from the store.

To resolve this, the updated version of GIMP from the Microsoft Store will require Windows 11 or at least Windows Server 2022 (Windows NT Build 10.0.20348.0).

Windows 10 is still supported, but only when GIMP is installed from our .exe installer.

Worths noting that we are no longer able to support versions of Windows older than Windows 10, and can no longer support 32-bit systems running Windows.

Installing the update will prevent future data loss during upgrades.

Technical details¶

This was being caused by the way MSIX (the format of apps distributed on Microsoft Store, GIMP included) is designed, which prefers sandboxed user data (like Flatpak and Snap). We have been trying to work with this requirement when running from MSIX, but were not successful.

So, to fix this packaging limitation, we were given the special “restricted capability” unvirtualizedResources (specifically virtualization:ExcludedDirectory), to preserve user data on %AppData%\GIMP, just as the .exe installer does. This is similar to what we do on other sandbox distributions such as Flatpak and Snap.

After the update, GIMP user data will be copied on upgrades.

The update does not affect images or other resources stored outside your GIMP folder.

How to migrate the previous user data¶

This restricted capability is only available on Windows NT Build 10.0.20348.0 and later. So, users with older Windows versions will need to use the .exe installer. The binaries inside the .exe installer and the .msix are exactly the same.

For Windows 10 users, in order not to lose your user data from the MS Store version, manually locate your config dir at %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\GIMP*\LocalCache\Roaming\GIMP then copy it to %APPDATA%\GIMP (if that folder does not exist or is empty).