Yes, UWP is Still Dead (Premium)

Every year, we’re forced to revisit this topic, so why not just have some fun with it? Is the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) (still) dead?

Why, yes. Yes, it is.

I bring this up now because it was one of the first questions asked of Microsoft at one of the Build 2022 sessions I attended yesterday, Ask the Experts: Building great apps with the open platform of Windows. The session was hosted by Thomas Fennel, who last October publicly admitted that UWP was deprecated, that it would only receive “bug, reliability, and security fixes,” and not new features. Developers who needed the latest features, including the WinUI 3 technologies required for the Windows 11 look and feel, would need to move along to the Windows App SDK, he said at the time.

I assumed that ended the debate. But what the heck. Maybe something has changed.

“We’ve got one of the classics here that we’re going to have to talk about very briefly,” the affable Fennel said. “’Is UWP dead? Will you ever support WinUI 3 in UWP and, if not, will WinUI 2 development continue alongside WinUI 3?’ I’m going to start with the first one. UWP’s not dead. We posted a fairly detailed article on the Win App SDK repo last year that talks about UWP, the investments in the platform, etc. and I highly recommend that you go check that out.”

I do too. It’s referenced above in that October link. But here’s the direct link. It says what I said it says: nothing new is supported in UWP. And I’ll even expand on what that post says: UWP is still supported in the sense that each version of UWP is tied to a specific Windows 10 version; that, of course, is one of the problems with UWP, which is why Microsoft decoupled these capabilities from Windows milestones with the Windows App SDK, which is the future of desktop development.

“The short answer is, no, it’s not dead,” he concludes of UWP. “There [are] a lot of people using it that really like it, and they’ll continue to love it, and use it, and it will continue to be a great app platform. It’s, like, good for the right things that people want to use it for. So please, use it where it makes sense.”

Ah boy. Fennel then passes the question on to Ryan Demopoulos, the lead product manager for the Windows App SDK & WinUI.

“Our platform innovation, really where we’re focusing on the native side of the platform, is in the Windows App SDK,” he said. “And the Windows App SDK targets Win32 [desktop]. So even though UWP isn’t dead, we’re not going to be doing a lot of UWP advancement and investment in that direction. We’re really trying to basically bring all the goodness that the UWP community has had for many years and try to bring that to Win32 developers so they can tap into and leverage that benefit too. So I’ll just add that on there, and make that clear.”

Yes, that is clear. It’s literally the point I’ve been making for years.

(Interestingly, the next question is the one I asked, about the timing and contents of the Windows App SDK 1.1 release. Ryan said that it would be announced today, Wednesday. So I will write that up when that happens. What with it being the future of Windows app development and all.)

With regards to the “why” of Microsoft’s continued battle against being clear in this case, I think there are two issues.

The first is the support timeline I noted above, that UWP maybe shouldn’t be called “dead” when it is actively supported. But that’s silly: Windows 8.1 is still supported today too, and I don’t think anyone would describe that as anything but dead. Stating it clearly is just obvious, in my opinion.

But the second is more important: Millions of Windows app developers followed Microsoft down the Metro/Modern/Windows Store/Universal/UWP rabbit hole starting in 2012. And while we can debate whether that was wise and who is to blame, we can at least all agree that it’s a fact and that investments of time, money, and resources were made, code was written, and apps are out in the world. And no one who did that work wants to hear a few years later that the underlying technology is dead. That would feel harsh to those people.

Microsoft’s messaging is softer: Of course your apps and the technologies they use are still supported, and they are not dead. We would never leave you hanging. We may not be updating UWP with new features, but you are still free to migrate your apps to the Windows App SDK if you would like to support new features like the Windows 11 look and feel. Or not. It’s up to you.

And that’s true. But to use the Windows 8.1 example, of course you are free to continue to use this aging platform if you want. But we strongly recommend upgrading to Windows 10 or 11 as soon as possible—or, better yet, buying a new Windows 11 PC—to get all the latest advances. Or not. It’s up to you.

Of course, I’m not Microsoft. And I can speak plainly.

Plainly speaking, UWP is dead, guys. That’s been true for years. And if we’re lucky, this will be the last time we ever need to discuss this again.