Is it possible to share data between users in a Windows Store App?

Question

I'm pretty sure that I know the answer to this question (A big fat NO), but is it possible to share downloaded data between the same application but multiple users (Windows login, not Microsoft Store users) in a Windows Runtime environment? The local data folder is relative to each login user, so this seems impossible at first glance. It would be a huge waste for each user to have to download all of the content for the application since it is between 700MB - 1GB of content per app.

Answer 1

This accepted answer is outdated. It is now possible to share data between users of a given app in Windows 10, by changing a setting in Group Policy Editor. The path in GP Editor (gpedit.msc) is:

\ Local Computer Policy \ Administrative Templates \ Windows Components \ App Package Deployment \ "Allow a Windows app to share application data between users".

Set to "Enabled", and an app can share its data across users.

Once enabled, in UWP apps, the path given by Windows.Storage.ApplicationData.Current.SharedLocalFolder.Path is available for sharing data across users. When not enabled, the path returned by this is Null.

Answer 2

You can only share between accounts which share a Windows Store account and even then the app data is still installed for each account. http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/windows-8-tip-share-apps-between-multiple-accounts