Skip to main content

Add as a preferred source on Google


News

Microsoft Advances Native UI Platform for Windows, WinUI

Microsoft this week launched a new web site for WinUI, its native UI platform for applications running on Windows 10 devices, as a new version 3 is offered in beta.

WinUI is used to build rich .NET and C++ applications and also to power Microsoft properties including the Windows and Xbox OS shells, along with platforms such as Xamarin.Forms and React Native Windows. It was open sourced by Microsoft in 2018. The stable WinUI 2.x series works only with Universal Windows Platform (UWP) applications, providing them with some of the latest XAML controls and Fluent Design functionality.

The new WinUI site mainly extols the virtues of the platform, while also providing a link to try out the WinUI 3.0 alpha offering that improves on the previous UWP-only WinUI 2.x series, which itself is still receiving updates.

WinUI 3.0 will be the full UI stack, including XAML, composition and input, not tied to UWP.

WinUI 3
[Click on image for larger view.] WinUI 3 (source: Microsoft).

"So we have a bunch of goals with this" said a dev team member during last month's regular WinUI Community Call (a March call was in progress during the writing of this article and will probably be posted soon).

With a scheduled delivery time-frame of "2020," the goals sought in WinUI 3.0 include:

  • full UI stack now decoupled from the OS
  • removing barriers between UWP and Win32 (desktop): works with both
  • support .NET 5 and C++
  • backward-compatible on Windows 10

.NET 5, of course, is the unifying project to bundle all things .NET into one platform. Its first preview just shipped ahead of a November GA release date.

While the UWP decoupling is the main new feature being implemented in WinUI 3.0, some other new features planned include:

  • Downlevel support (backward compatibility) for all existing features: new Xaml and Composition features that were added in the Windows May 2019 Update will now work on Creators Update and newer!
  • A new Microsoft Edge (Chromium) WebView Xaml control
  • Input validation support
  • New Visual Studio 2019 app templates for different combinations of app type (Win32, UWP) and language (.NET, C++)

More resources available to explore WinUI include:

About the Author

David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.

comments powered by Disqus

Featured

  • Microsoft Highlights Visual Studio Live! Event Lineup and Longtime Developer Community Role

    A Microsoft MVP Blog post on Visual Studio Live!'s longevity arrives as the 2026 conference series continues with upcoming stops at Microsoft HQ, San Diego and Orlando.

  • Using Local AI to Cut Copilot Usage-Based Billing Shock

    After being gobsmacked by the new billing plan using almost all my monthly credits in one or two days, I tried pushing some Copilot-style coding work onto local models in VS Code. What I found was less "free AI" and more "pick your pain": cloud charges on one side, heavy local resource use and long waits on the other.

  • .NET 11 Preview 5 Focuses on Performance, Productivity and Safer Code

    .NET 11 Preview 5 focuses on under-the-hood runtime performance gains, streamlined APIs and language features that reduce boilerplate, plus built‑in security checks and incremental ASP.NET Core and EF Core improvements aimed at everyday developer productivity.

  • VS Code 1.124 Focuses on Agent Autonomy and Parallel Sessions

    Microsoft's June 2026 VS Code update turns on Autopilot by default and adds background sending for agent sessions.

Most   Popular

Subscribe on YouTube