This, and add to that the fact that web apps make it trivial for the dev to just randomly change the GUI out from under me without my consent or ability to prevent it, and, well, wonder why I and so many others dislike them? I want to be able to refuse app updates, thank you very much.

A question - Which portion of Microsoft, the multi-headed beast develops pure-native apps now ? Even the Windows 11 Settings app is Javascript.

The multi-headed beast has been assimilated by web-tech. They can't code GUI C++ no more - except their compiler/graphics team. And even the latter are dying.

There are like three settings pages that use JavaScript and React Native, the vast majority of Settings is C++ and XAML/WinUI2

but that was already developed, all new development it's going with web based at microsoft

Id be interested in a source for both this and the parent's comment. How do we know which settings pages use which tech? Have people been decompiling them?

Pretty easy to know by just looking at app install folder, or, with Visual Studio, without any need to do any decompiling.

In practice, I guess most people realize because web tech just behaves different than native.

As a user Microsoft is windows and windows is Microsoft.

If doing native apps was realistic then I’d expect windows, Microsoft, etc to also do them.