Native 64bit build?

[T0m0rr0w]

Windhawk is still 32bit. Is that for compatibility reasons or is it a development resources issue?
Yes i get that the benefit of being 64bit would likely be small if not negligible, but it's nearly 2026.

32bit should exist only as compatibility for older Windows versions. I mean you cant even download a 32bit Windows 11.
Even other programs that were 32bit holdouts like Steam and AIDA64 have moved to 64bit.

[m417z]

The main process is 32-bit because Windhawk supports running in all three Windows flavors: x86 (32-bit), x64 (64-bit), and ARM64. x86 processes can run in all three. But the engine, which is the module that's injected into processes and does the actual customization, must match the target process. It was available only in x86 and x64 flavors, and since Windhawk v1.6 an ARM64 variant is available too.

Let's consider the options:

• Main process is 32-bit
  • Pros: Support for 32-bit Windows
  • Cons: Task Manger shows it as 32-bit, maybe a negligible performance impact (but it's in waiting state most of the time anyway)
• Main process is 64-bit
  • Pros/cons: The inverse of the above
• Bundle both a 32-bit process and a 64-bit process
  • Cons: Larger installation size, extra maintenance

32-bit Windows is no longer supported by Microsoft now that Win10 is (mostly) unsupported, but currently we get support for it for free, and the amount of users, while very small, is larger than zero.

In the future, I might switch to 64-bit and drop 32-bit support, but it's not a high priority, and the benefit of doing so it mainly cosmetic in Task Manager.

[T0m0rr0w]

Thank you for this explanation. I agree that this should not be a priority, but hopefully some day when 32bit usable has dropped to negligible levels...

As i understand there are still a lot of Win10 users tho i believe most of them are already running 64bit builds. IoT versions of Win10 are supported until 2032 if i remember correctly.

ARM64 support is appreciated even if usage is low right now, but it will likely grow in the future. Especially in mobile segment.