Microsoft Releases Windows App SDK 1.2

The Windows App SDK 1.2 now supports creating widgets for Windows 11, more modern WinUI controls, and various reliability, stability, and performance improvements.

“Windows App SDK provides a unified set of APIs and tools to help you build beautiful and powerful Windows desktop apps,” Microsoft’s Gabby Bilka writes. “These APIs and tools can be used in a consistent way by any C++ Win32 or C# .NET app on a broad set of target Windows OS versions. WinAppSDK stays up to date with frequent, OS independent releases and supports the latest innovations in Windows app development, including .NET & Visual Studio.”

That’s an oversimplification, but whatever: the Windows App SDK is basically the replacement for the Universal Windows Platform (UWP), and it offers various improvements—and some of the same limitations and other problems—of its predecessor. Here’s what’s new in version 1.2:

Widgets. Third-party (i.e. non-Microsoft) developers can now create widgets for packaged Win32 apps and test them locally in Widgets in the Windows Insider Program. This feature will be coming to mainstream Windows 11 users at some point in the future.

WinUI 3 updates. The Windows App SDK 1.2 comes with new modern WinUI 3 InfoBadge and media playback controls, and WinUI 3 has been updated with the latest controls, styles, and behaviors. There are also new voice and video calling via the Azure Communication Services offering that powers calling in Microsoft Teams.

Arm64 development support. Windows App SDK apps could previously run on Windows 11 on Arm, but now they can be developed on Windows 11 on Arm as well via the newest version of Visual Studio.

There’s more, but you can check out the original blog post for all the details.