Windows App SDK 1.1 Due By Mid-2022

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.

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Conversation 7 comments

  • will

    Premium Member
    12 February, 2022 - 10:56 am

    <p>I am not a developer, but does Microsoft ship any of their apps using the new frameworks?</p>

    • Paul Thurrott

      Premium Member
      12 February, 2022 - 12:11 pm

      <p>I’m pretty sure the app updates we’re seeing in Windows 11 are straight-up UWP and/or WinUI (of some variant). The new Notepad looks like a WinUI front-end to the classic desktop app, Paint too. </p>

    • jonor

      06 March, 2022 - 4:08 pm

      <p>When they write Windows 11 style apps, they often seem to be UWP apps using WinUI 2.x and then XAML Islands if they need Win32 bits. I think that’s how they did the new Explorer where the actual content box with files &amp; folders and the view settings is the same old.</p><p><br></p><p>With this in mind, it makes sense WinUI 2.6 was released first with the new Windows 11 styles – because that’s what Microsoft has been "dogfooding" themselves during development of Windows 11. </p><p><br></p><p>It’s a bit of a weird situation though because WinUI 2 is only for UWP and UWP is kind of on the way out. I think what might have happened is that WinUI 3 took a bit longer time than expected to get done.</p>

  • fp0n

    14 February, 2022 - 9:27 am

    <p>As a long-time Windows Developer, this is a necessary thing but may be too little, too late for most developers. Win32/MFC, Windows Forms and WPF were all basically locked in the basement and given scraps of food occasionally for a long time and UWP never had the features needed, primarily backward compatibility with older platforms and ability to do many of the things (multiple windows is one example) that could be done and had been used a lot in mainstream Windows applications. Many people have moved on at this point to web and mobile as the primary platforms – other than games there are not a lot of big Windows client applications but there was no path forward for most of the bulk of the existing applications which are now back out of the basement and at least getting some regular updates (port to NET 6 for Forms, WPF). Microsoft still needs to rationalize the Xamirin/NET MAUI/Blazor/ReactNative and WinUI parts of their efforts so that people can understand exactly what is recommended for both new development and upgrading existing applications into clear guidance and clean up some of the loose ends between the various flavors. They also need to make the case why developers shouldn’t use something like Flutter or UNO or some of the other options. Oh, and Linux support would go a long way to helping mainstream developers adopt something like MAUI. </p>

    • AlanBourke

      15 February, 2022 - 11:20 am

      <p>"other than games there are not a lot of big Windows client applications"</p><p><br></p><p>Microsoft Office</p><p>Visual Studio</p><p>Visual Studio Code</p><p>All the other IDEs </p><p>Almost all business and manufacturing software (ERP, payroll etc)</p><p>The entire Adobe suite (Photoshop etc) and anything similar in the design world</p><p><br></p><p>And that’s just the stuff I use and what I encounter on all our customer sites. Cloud\browser based applications still very much the exception.</p>

  • ikjadoon

    14 February, 2022 - 10:38 am

    <p>Must be just me where 2 of the 8 URLs to their "growing ecosystem" are having issues?</p><p><br></p><p>Uno Platform = "Error 403 – This web app is stopped"</p><p><br></p><p>Syncfusion = "The page that you are trying to access cannot be loaded. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 has encountered an error."</p><p><br></p><p>I didn’t even know I had Defender for Office 365….</p>

  • javial

    Premium Member
    26 February, 2022 - 4:10 am

    <p>This is ONLY for mobile/tablets apps. No real full powered windows applications like Windows Forms or WPF.</p>

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