Faster Win32 app delivery in Intune: one off the "should be simple" list?
Since 2021, my Intune training deck has included a slide called "Things that should be simple in [insert year]".
It collects the features where you think "surely that's straightforward" (Desktop wallpapers, Printing etc.) Every year I update the year, and every year most of the items stay put.
(Shout out to automatic health monitoring and windows hello on file shares with cloud Kerberos trust.)
One of the longest-standing items is Win32 app delivery. You assign an app, and then you wait. The Intune Management Extension checks for Win32 app changes on its own polling schedule, so a new assignment or change can take up to 8 hours to reach a device. You can force a sync, restart the IME service, or tell the user to reboot and make a cup of tea. None of that is something you should have to explain to a customer in 2026.
Microsoft's latest What's New entry (service release 2609) looks like it fixes this. Intune now sends push notifications when an admin or the service changes a Win32 app. That prompts managed devices to check in sooner, rather than waiting for the next polling interval. There's no new admin workflow, so you don't need to change anything; deployments should simply be more responsive.
A few caveats from a practitioner's point of view:
- Microsoft says devices check in sooner. It doesn't say instantly, and it gives no new delivery time, so I'd test it in your own tenant before promising anyone a timeframe. (some quick tests suggest its is quicker, but youve burned me before Microsoft....)
- It applies to Windows only.
- Feature rollouts are staged, so you might not see the change in every tenant straight away.
If it works as described, this could be the first item to come off that slide in five years. I'll report back once I've tested it in the field.
Source: What's new in Microsoft Intune – Faster delivery of Win32 apps
Now fix these ones...
