Microsoft Paint appears to have escaped death row.
Credit: Microsoft
Microsoft has decided to spare the 34-year-old graphics editor after announcing in 2017 that it would be relegated from a program included in Windows 10 to a separate, downloadable app.
MS Paint was expected to vanish from Windows 10 after the Fall Creators Update last October, but it somehow escaped that grim fate. Now it appears it'll be sticking around for a while longer.
Brandon LeBlanc, a senior program manager at Microsoft, confirmed in a tweet that the legendary program will remain pre-installed on Windows 10.
"Yes, MSPaint will be included in 1903. It'll remain included in Windows 10 for now," LeBlanc tweeted in response to why a warning about MS Paint's removal disappeared from Windows 10 Build 1903.
Microsoft didn't say why it had a change of heart about Paint, nor has the company reassured fans of the program that it would remain a permanent fixture of Windows 10. However, MS Paint will at least remain for the foreseeable future, which will be a huge relief to Windows users who employ Paint for touching up photos or drawing simple sketches.
MS Paint played a big role in the early days of personal computing, but the program hasn't aged well in the past few years. Instead of updating the app, Microsoft moved most of its features over to Paint 3D, a modern 3D modeling application that's pre-installed on all Windows laptops. Once its three-dimensional counterpart launched in 2017, Paint quickly faced redundancy and found its place on Microsoft's chopping block.
Now the iconic program appears to have found new life, though we can only hope it isn't short lived.
