Microsoft quietly revealed that it will ship Windows App SDK 1.1 by mid-year, with multi-window and push notification support coming later in 2022.
“The Windows App SDK [is] the starting point for your ability to build and ship Windows desktop apps with Windows 10 and Windows 11,” the Windows Developer Team writes, referring to the product previously codenamed Project Reunion. “It includes the ability to use Windows App SDK with a .NET 5+ app, as well as WinUI 3 and WebView2 for modern UI development. Windows App SDK is one of many important improvements you can use to create great Windows apps and we can’t wait to keep moving forward with even more features.”
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Windows App SDK 1.0 was released last November, about a week after .NET 6, and most of the Microsoft blog post deals with explaining what this thing is, exactly—a way to combine modern app development features previously locked in the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) with the “power” of the classic Win32 API—and what the first version delivered. There’s also a handy list of partners that have shipped WinUI 3 controls.
But the only really interesting thing here are the tidbits about the future. After noting vaguely that “the team aims to continue putting out regular previews” is “actively seeking your feedback on each of them,” we get a few details.
“In the near term, we plan to release Windows App SDK 1.1 Experimental in the next few weeks and Windows App SDK 1.1 GA [general availability] in late Q2, with preview releases that will ship alongside these stable releases,” the post explains. “Throughout the next calendar year, more technologies will be coming to WinAppSDK, such as multi-window support and push notifications.”
And … that’s it. Presumably, we’ll learn more at Microsoft Build, which will almost certainly be virtual again this year, probably in May.