NordVPN, a popular VPN provider, operates over 6,400 ultra-fast VPN servers in 111 countries worldwide. Today, the company released its official app for Windows on ARM devices, making it one of the first VPN providers to offer native support for this platform. This includes devices like the latest Surface Pro series, Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge, Lenovo Flex 5G, HP Elite Folio, and Acer Spin 7.
With this new ARM-native app, users can enjoy enhanced performance when encrypting their internet traffic. While this initial release doesn"t include the Threat Protection and Threat Protection Pro features, NordVPN plans to add them in future updates.
The new NordVPN Windows on ARM app supports French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Swedish, Dutch, and Polish languages. This release is a significant step towards broader ARM support in the VPN space.
Last month, another popular VPN service, ExpressVPN, announced the availability of its app for Windows on ARM PCs. ExpressVPN"s app development journey for Windows on ARM is quite interesting. At first, ExpressVPN planned to develop an ARM-native application. Still, they changed their plans following the release of Microsoft’s new Prism emulator, which is available as part of the Windows 11 24H2 update.
The Prism emulator runs x86 apps with performance comparable to a native build. ExpressVPN"s app UI and backend run in emulated mode, while the driver for their Lightway protocol is developed specifically for Windows on ARM devices.
Apart from Microsoft Office apps, Windows on ARM is finally gaining momentum, with several third-party app developers releasing their native apps. Several popular apps, including Chrome, Spotify, Zoom, WhatsApp, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, Blender, Affinity Suite, DaVinci Resolve, Arc browser, and many more, now run natively on ARM. Several popular apps, including Slack and Google Drive, are also coming soon.