UWP App fails to start / silently aborts on Windows 10 after update 4.6.4.0

Hi Hue Essentials Team,

Since the recent update to version 4.6.4.0 this week, the Hue Essentials UWP app no longer opens on my Windows 10 Pro (x64) PC.

When I click the app icon, absolutely nothing happens—no window appears, and it doesn’t even trigger a classic crash.

I have done some extensive digging in the Windows Event Viewer. Under “Windows Logs → Application”, there is no “Application Error” or “.NET Runtime” error logged at all. The app doesn’t even get the chance to execute code.

However, under “Applications and Services Logs → Microsoft → Windows → AppXDeployment-Server → Operational”, I can see that the package deployment actually succeeds:

“Leistungszusammenfassung des Bereitstellungsvorgangs Register für Paket HueEssentials.HueEssentials_4.6.4.0_x64__yfdreesr38bg8: Overall time: 282 ms”

It seems that right after this quick registration, Windows silently aborts the UI initialization.

I have already performed all the standard and advanced troubleshooting steps, to no avail:

  • Repaired and Reset the app via Windows Settings.
  • Completely uninstalled and reinstalled the app via the Microsoft Store.
  • Cleared the MS Store cache (wsreset.exe).
  • Manually re-registered the AppX package via PowerShell (which ran through perfectly fine).
  • Restarted the Windows Update service.
  • Verified that Background App permissions are fully granted.
  • Ran DISM and SFC /scannow to rule out corrupted Windows system files.

Since none of these fixes worked, it strongly indicates that version 4.6.4.0 might have introduced an API call, a new WinUI component, or a Target-Build setting that accidentally breaks compatibility with Windows 10, causing the OS to immediately block the execution.

Since a lot of users are still relying on Windows 10, I really hope this can be investigated and fixed ASAP in a follow-up patch (v4.6.5).

Please let me know if you need any additional system data or logs to debug this!

Best regards,
Martin