WinUI is the native UI platform for Windows 10. This document outlines the prospective roadmap for WinUI through 2020 and into 2021. WinUI is under active development by the Windows developer platform team and the roadmap will continue to evolve based on market changes and customer feedback, so please note that the plans outlined here aren't exhaustive or guaranteed. We welcome your feedback on the roadmap: please feel free to contribute to existing issues or file a new issue.
Note: For a detailed look at the target availability dates for certain features in WinUI 3, see our feature roadmap.
WinUI continues to advance and improve across both generations of the technology:
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WinUI 2: The 2nd generation of the WinUI stack for UWP apps, consisting of a XAML and Visual Layer built directly into the Windows 10 operating system, and a controls library built on top of the OS, delivered via NuGet, and hosted at this repository.
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WinUI 3: A new, 3rd generation of WinUI that ships the entire WinUI stack decoupled from the operating system and usable in either Win32 or UWP apps.
WinUI provides a number of benefits which makes it the best way to create user interfaces for Windows apps:
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The native UI platform of Windows
WinUI is the highly-optimized native UI platform used to create Windows itself, now made more broadly available for all developers to use to reach Windows. It's a thoroughly tested and proven UI platform that powers the operating system environment and essential experiences of 1 billion+ Windows 10 PC, XBox One, HoloLens, Surface Hub and other devices. -
The latest advancements in Fluent Design
WinUI is Microsoft's main focus for native, accessible Windows UI and controls and is the definitive source for the Fluent Design System on Windows.
It will also support the latest composition and rendering innovations like vector animations, effects, shadows and lighting. -
Backward compatibility for new features
New WinUI features will continue to be backward-compatible with a wide range of Windows 10 versions. With WinUI 3, you can start building and shipping apps with new features immediately as soon as they're released, without having to wait for your users to be running the latest update of Windows 10. -
Native development support
WinUI can be used with .NET, but doesn't depend on .NET: WinUI is 100% C++ and can be used in unmanaged Windows apps, for example using standard C++17 via C++/WinRT. -
More frequent updates
WinUI is planned to ship roughly every 4 months, with monthly pre-release builds. This is more of a guideline than a rule, but that is what the team strives for. -
Open source development and community engagement
The WinUI 2 Controls Library is already open source on GitHub, and we plan to add the full WinUI 3 XAML framework into this repo in the coming months. You can engage directly with Microsoft's core engineering team and contribute bug reports, feature ideas, and even code: see the Contribution Guide for more info. You can also try out the monthly pre-release builds to see new in-development features and help shape their final form.
The next release of the WinUI 2 Controls Library will be v2.6, ETA Spring 2021.
WinUI 2.6 will include new Xaml features and fixes for UWP apps on Windows 10. You can find a list of currently planned work in the WinUI 2.6 milestone.
For installation instructions see Getting started with the Windows UI Library.
WinUI 3 is the next generation of native Windows UI, consisting of all the major UX layers of Windows 10 decoupled and shipping as a standalone solution for you to use.
It focuses on enabling three main use cases:
- Modernizing existing apps
- Enabling you to extend existing Win32 (WPF, WinForms, MFC...) apps with modern Windows 10 UI at your own pace using the upcoming latest version of Xaml Islands. Developers who currently use WinUI 2 will be able to easily move to WinUI 3, and take advantage of everything the 3rd generation has to offer
- Creating new Windows apps
- Enabling you to easily create new modern Windows apps with your choice of app model (Win32 or UWP) and language (.NET or C++)
- Enabling other frameworks
- Providing the native implementation for other frameworks like React Native when running on Windows
WinUI 3 is currently available as a part of Project Reunion 0.5 for building stable and supported desktop/Win32 apps for production scenarios:
Windows UI Library 3 - Project Reunion 0.5 (March 2021)
There's also a preview version of WinUI 3 available that supports building UWP apps - see the preview release notes. Note that preview releases have limitations and known issues, so they are not equipped for production apps.
The 3rd generation of WinUI has some key benefits over the 2nd generation, including:
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Flexible desktop development
WinUI 3 will let you more easily mix and match the right combination of:- Language: C# (.NET 5), C++ 17
- App model: UWP, Win32
- Packaging: MSIX (AppX for the Microsoft Store), unpackaged (xcopy, MSI, etc.)
- Interop: use WinUI 3 to extend existing WPF, WinForms, and MFC apps with modern Fluent UI
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A native Windows target for web and cross-platform frameworks
WinUI 3 is better optimized for libraries and frameworks to build on.
For example, the new high-performance C++ React Native Windows implementation is currently working on using WinUI 3 as its base.
Conceptual overview on how WinUI 3 relates to WinUI 2 and other technologies:
WinUI 3 is a UI layer that takes the decoupled UWP XAML Visual Layer, the WinUI 2 library, and combines it with more modern features and capabilities. This layer can be used in any Desktop app or UWP app.
You can watch Ryan Demopoulos’ guest keynote at UnoConf 2020, entitled WinUI and Project Reunion: The Present and the Future, for more details: https://youtu.be/nbqe9uHWT_c?t=2056
The existing UWP XAML APIs that ship as part of the OS will no longer receive new feature updates. They will still receive security updates and critical fixes according to the Windows 10 support lifecycle.
The Universal Windows Platform contains more than just the XAML framework (e.g. application and security model, media pipeline, Xbox and Windows 10 shell integrations, broad device support) and will continue to evolve.
Project Reunion is a set of libraries, frameworks, components, and tools that you can use in your apps to access powerful Windows platform functionality from all kinds of apps on many versions of Windows. WinUI 3 ships as a component of Project Reunion as it brings modern UI to a variety of Windows app types.
Creating a new WinUI 3 app will be easy using new Visual Studio 2019 project templates.
For existing UWP XAML apps there will be some updates required when migrating to WinUI 3. These updates will require little effort, with the bulk of most project changes involving find-and-replace namespace changes. We'd love to hear your thoughts on the developer experience in the WinUI 3.0 tooling discussion issue.
The first stable, supported version of WinUI 3 has just been released. We plan to transition into a release cadence that includes more frequent pre-releases alongside less frequent stable releases, similar to the release cadence of WinUI 2.x.
See the image below for a more detailed look at our past and future release plans for WinUI 3:
We know that for many of our developers, the choice to adopt WinUI 3 is dependent on certain features and capabilities. The table below outlines the status on WinUI 3 features, and the expected date they'll be available to you.
As we begin moving towards releasing preview and stable packages in parallel, you'll see in the feature roadmap below that some features remain "preview" features during stable releases. This means that the feature is not stable/bug-free enough to be included in the stable release, but will be available in the corresponding pre-release package.
Please note: This is a living document, and the information below can and likely will change as the project continues development. The feature availability dates listed here are the team's current goals and expectations, but are not promises or guarantees.
For questions or status updates on either features listed here, or features not on this list, you can file an issue on our repo or ask during our monthly community calls.
🟢 - Available as supported feature
🔷 - Available as preview feature
🟪 - Stretch goal
Blank - Not available
WinUI 3 - Project Reunion 0.5 is our latest release.
| Customer Capability | Preview 3 (Nov 2020) | Preview 4 (Feb 2021) | Project Reunion 0.5 (March 2021) | Project Reunion 0.8 (May 2021) | Planned for a future update |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WinUI 3 in Desktop (Win32) apps | 🔷 |
🔷 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
| WinUI 3 in UWP apps | 🔷 |
🔷 |
🔷 |
🔷 |
🟢 |
| Supports MSIX Deployment | 🔷 |
🔷 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
| WinUI 3 works downlevel to Windows 10 version 1809 and above | 🔷 |
🔷 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
| Supports the latest .NET | 🔷 |
🔷 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
<SwapChainPanel> |
🔷 |
🔷 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
| Chromium-based WebView2 | 🔷 |
🔷 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
| Title bar customization | 🔷 |
🔷 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
| Fluent Shadows | 🔷 |
🔷 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
| ARM64 support | 🔷 |
🔷 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
| Input validation for data fields | 🔷 |
🔷 |
🔷 |
🔷 |
🟢 |
| Supports multiple top-level windows | 🔷 |
🔷 |
🔷 |
🔷 |
🟢 |
| Drag and drop | 🔷 |
🔷 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
| Off-thread input for SwapChainPanels | 🔷 |
🔷 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
| RenderTargetBitmap | 🔷 |
🔷 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
| Mouse cursor customization | 🔷 |
🔷 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
| Animated Gif support | 🔷 |
🔷 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
| VirtualSurfaceImageSource (VSIS) support | 🔷 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
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| In-app acrylic | 🟢 |
🟢 |
🟢 |
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| Supports non-MSIX deployment | 🟢 |
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| XAML Islands | 🟢 |
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| Works on Windows 10X | 🟢 |
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| Works on additional Windows form factors (Xbox, HoloLens, IoT, Surface Hub) | 🟢 |
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| Background acrylic | 🟢 |
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| Reveal Highlight | 🟪 |
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| Media Controls | 🟢 |
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<InkCanvas> |
🟢 |
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<Map Control> |
🟪 |