The last major release of Windows Live Writer came out in 2012 (end-of-life), and the software was completely discontinued in January 2017.

[4] The software featured WYSIWYG authoring, photo-publishing and map-publishing functionality, and was compatible with Windows Live Spaces, SharePoint blogs, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress, Telligent Community, PBlogs.gr, JournalHome, the MetaWeblog API, the Movable Type API, Blogengine, Squarespace, and all blogs that supported Really Simple Discovery.

It includes inline spell checking, table editing, ability to add categories, page authoring for WordPress and TypePad, support for excerpts and extended entries, improved hyperlinking and image insertion, and a new "Paste Special" function.

Also improved integration to SharePoint 2007 support, new APIs enabling custom extensions by weblog providers, automatic synchronization of local and online edits, integration with Windows Live Gallery, and support for "Blogger Labels".

Released on September 30, 2010, Windows Live Writer 2011 introduced the new Ribbon user interface.