Discord is now available natively on Windows on ARM

At long last, Discord has a native client for Windows PCs powered by ARM processors.

About a year ago, Discord confirmed that a native client for Windows on ARM was in the works. With the success of the Snapdragon X1 lineup and the upcoming X2, Windows on ARM became much more popular, especially after Microsoft convinced more developers to release ARM-native apps. Now, after two years of waiting, Discord has finally launched its native app for Windows on ARM.

While the company has yet to announce the release, the official website already lets you download Discord for Windows on ARM. Upon clicking the "Download for Windows" button, Discord's website lets you choose an x86 or ARM64 version. If you are unsure that the apps on your PC are ARM-native, launch Task Manager, go to the Details tab, and check the Architecture column (Microsoft is also working on some NPU-related improvements for Task Manager).

While modern ARM processors for Windows are pretty good at emulating x86 software, allowing you to run most apps with some exceptions, having a native app brings some notable benefits, such as better performance and lower energy consumption.

Although Discord is primarily targeted at gamers (you can get Game Pass with Discord Nitro, by the way), many people use the platform for communication outside gaming. It is a very popular service, and having it as a native app on ARM-powered Windows PCs will make the latter more attractive, especially with the upcoming Snapdragon X2 devices.

Microsoft recently announced new Surface PCs with Intel's Core Ultra 300 Series and confirmed that consumer-facing Surface with Snapdragon X2 chips would follow soon.

You can download Discord for Windows from the official website. It is also available in the Microsoft Store, but the current listing and its hardware requirements do not mention ARM64 support.