When I uninstalled the windows store version 3.8 it appears to have placed two links in my \AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps folder (though they may have always been there), python.exe and python3.exe. When I run these in PowerShell both send me to the 3.7 version in the store. There is a note on the page stating this version is not guaranteed to be stable and points them to the 3.8 version. As these are to make the install as painless as possible these should point to the most stable version; 3.8 in the store.

These links are controlled by Microsoft, and not by us. (Though just to make things confusing, I am the person at Microsoft who can get them updated.)

We've been waiting for the ecosystem to be ready. Too many packages have been failing to install on Python 3.8 for us to want to switch, as we really don't want to drop new Python users into the depths of debugging packaging failures. I need to loop around and find out which ones are still problematic before making the final call.

For reference, I'm going to wait for protobuf, simplejson and Tornado to provide Python 3.8 wheels before switching the default version. Ideally I'd like markupsafe to have wheels as well, but they have a fallback so it's okay.

Everything else in the top 100 according to https://hugovk.github.io/top-pypi-packages/ is either pure or has Windows 3.8 wheels already.