1.8 Preview 1 (1.8.250814004-preview1) 🔃

The first preview of WinAppSDK 1.8 is now available! Check out the release notes for more information on the new & updated features and known issues.

Updates to this version:

The 1.8 Preview 1 package is available at https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.WindowsAppSDK/1.8.250814004-preview

• Prior to WinAppSDK 1.8, packaged apps running in the AppContainer did not require the packageManagement capability, due to a DeploymentManager auto-initialization issue. That issue has now been resolved, and in turn, the packageManagement capability is now required for AppContainer-based apps.
• Allows applications to determine if an input exceeds the allowable size for a Text Summarizer call.
• Enables text rewriting with specific tones (Casual, Formal, or Professional).
• Enables developers to specify the desired output language for conversation summarization.

Bugs fixed in the new WinAppSDK Release:

• #10516 - BreadcrumbBar MoveFocus method should not use parameterless GetFocusedElement

Providing feedback

As we introduce new & upcoming features in our preview releases, we appreciate all of your feedback as we work towards a stable release:

• For WinUI 3 feedback, please open an issue on the WinUI repo.
• For feedback regarding all other Windows App SDK components, please open an issue here, on the Windows App SDK repo.

Windows App SDK 1.8 Experimental 4 introduces exciting new features designed to bring artificial intelligence (AI) to your products with the power of Phi Silica and Windows AI APIs.

The Windows App SDK incorporates advanced Windows AI capabilities, enabling developers to seamlessly integrate intelligent features into their applications. These enhancements include:

• The introduction of Windows Machine Learning (WinML) brining hardware-accelerated machine learning capabilities to Windows applications.
• Windows AI Prompt Size validation determines if an input exceeds the allowable size for a text summarization call.
• Windows AI Text rewriter tone enabling specific tones in text rewrite of: Casual, Formal, and General.
• Windows AI Conversation Summarization in a targeted language, enhancing localization and user experience.

This release also include the following:

• Renamed the Microsoft.WindowsAppSDK.Packages component package to Microsoft.WindowsAppSDK.Runtime to better reflect the package's purpose.
• Removed duplicate .winmd files for AI components. For more information see Windows App SDK GitHub Issue #5439
• Addressed a potential crash in ApplicationDataProvider::GetStateFolderUris caused by reentrancy. For more information see Windows App SDK GitHub Issue #10513
• Addressed a UI bug where the TitleBar displayed incorrect spacing when a short title was used. For more information see Windows App SDK GitHub Issue #10492
• Addressed a UI bug where the CalendarDatePicker control displayed incorrect icon margins when a long header was set. For more information see Windows App SDK GitHub Issue #10469
• Resolved an issue related to versioning mismatches between WIndowsAppSDK and Windows SDK NuGet packages, which can cause new projects to fail to build out of the box. For more information see Windows App SDK GitHub Issue #10467 Addressed a regression where the mouse wheel input was ignored if the "Scroll inactive windows when hovering over them" setting was disabled, making windows appear perpetually inactive. For more information see Windows App SDK GitHub Issue #10091
• Addressed a deployment bug where failing to set $(WindowsPackageType)=MSIX in the project file prevents the Deployment Manager from being added, causing apps to require admin privileges unexpectedly. For more information see Windows App SDK GitHub Issue #8182

For information on responsible development practices utilized during the creation of the Windows AI APIs, which can also be applied when creating AI-assisted features, consult the Developing Responsible Generative AI Applications and Features on Windows guidance.

Windows App SDK 1.7.3 (1.7.250606001)

WinAppSDK 1.7.3 is the latest stable version of WinAppSDK providing new features and improvements to the platform. WinAppSDK 1.7.3 introduces exciting new features designed to bring artificial intelligence (AI) to your products with the power of Phi Silica and Windows AI APIs.

Whats new in WinAppSDK 1.7.3:

• Added a new Rank property to Widgets. Rank may be used by the platform's recommendation engine to sort Widgets from a same application package identity. Should multiple widgets from the same provider be recommended for a UI surface, the Rank property will determine the order in which they appear. The Rank property does not change how a Widget is placed compared to other provider's Widgets, nor does it affect the chance a Widget will be recommended.

This release also includes the following Bug Fixes:

• Added the following sentence to section 1a of the .nupkg license: When building Generative AI applications follow the guidelines in https://learn.microsoft.com/windows/ai/rai.
• Fixed a potential crash in ApplicationDataProvider::GetStateFolderUris caused by reentrancy. For more info, see GitHub issue #10513. (RuntimeCompatibilityChange: ApplicationDataProvider_ReentrancyProtection)
• Fixed a potential crash in WindowChrome::SetTitleBar when closing a window. For more info, see GitHub issue #9203. (RuntimeCompatibilityChange: WindowChrome_SetTitleBarCrash)
• Fixed a potential crash in PointerInputObserverWinRT::FlushCoalescedInput_Callback when there is reentrancy while processing input. (RuntimeCompatibilityChange: InputPointerSource_FlushReentrancyCrash)

To see everything that's new and changed, see the full Windows App SDK 1.7 release notes.

Try it out

• Download the 1.7.250513003NuGet package to use WinAppSDK 1.7 in your app.
• Download and update the WinUI Gallery to see the WinUI 3 updates firsthand.

Getting Started

To get started using Windows App SDK to develop Windows apps, check out the following documentation:

• Install developer tools .
• Create a WinUI 3 app.
• Continue your development journey.

Windows App SDK 1.6.9 (1.6.250602001)

This is a servicing release of the Windows App SDK that includes critical bug fixes and a new feature for the 1.6 release.

This release includes fixes the following critical bugs for 1.6:

• Fixed a potential crash in WindowChrome::SetTitleBar when closing a window. For more info, see GitHub issue #9203.

Check out our release notes for the list of issues fixed in this release.

Updating to this version

The 1.6.9 package is available at https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.WindowsAppSDK/1.6.250602001

Windows App SDK 1.7.2 (1.7.250513003)

WinAppSDK 1.7.2 is the latest stable version of WinAppSDK providing new features and improvements to the platform. WinAppSDK 1.7.2 introduces exciting new features designed to bring artificial intelligence (AI) to your products with the power of Phi Silica and Windows AI APIs.

Whats new in WinAppSDK 1.7.2:

• Phi Silica, Microsoft's most powerful NPU-tuned local language model, you can specify it to perform common tasks like summarizing a piece of text, rewriting a piece of text for clarity, and converting text to a table format.
• Image Description APIs enable the generation of textual descriptions of images.
• Text recognition, also known as optical character recognition (OCR), detects and extracts text within images, converting it into machine-readable character streams.
• The 'ImageScaler' APIs can increase the sharpness and clarity of an image and upscale the image by up to 8x its original resolution.
• The Image Segmentation APIs allow for the identification of specific objects within an image. By inputting an image and a "hints" object, the model returns a mask of the identified object.
• ApplicationData.MachineFolder is now easier to use on Windows >=10.0.26100.0 (Ge). Windows will create the Machine folder when a package manifesting opt-in support is added to a system if WinAppSDK 1.7.2 is present on the system.

This release also includes the following Bug Fixes:

• Fixed PackageDeploymentManager telemetry to properly capture completion status. For more info, see GitHub issue #5296. (RuntimeCompatibilityChange: N/A)
• Fixed a crash when using pen input on an x86 app. (RuntimeCompatibilityChange: InputStateManager_PenInputCrashX86)
• Fixed a potential crash if the window is already destroyed when WinUI is attempting to initialize for scrolling. (RuntimeCompatibilityChange: ActivateDirectManipulationManager_CheckCanInit)
• Fixed the WINDOWSAPPSDK_RELEASE_PATCH define and Microsoft::WindowsAppSDK::Release::Patch values in WindowsAppSDK-VersionInfo.h to not always be 0. The define is now the yymmdd date of the build, and the Patch value is the mmdd date. This change provides better runtime information on the version being used without changing any variable sizes or the version scheme. (RuntimeCompatibilityChange: N/A, header change)
• Fixed a potential issue in the Bootstrapper if it is used to load a 1.6 or earlier version of WinAppSDK. For more info, see GitHub issue #5349. (RuntimeCompatibilityChange: N/A)
• Fixed an issue where using MSBuild to build a single-project app could incorrectly fail with a build error if it didn't have a correct launchSettings.json. (RuntimeCompatibilityChange: N/A, build .targets change)
• Improved the performance of rendering the first frame on application launch. (RuntimeCompatibilityChange: DwmCoreI_OptimizeFirstFrameLatency)

To see everything that's new and changed, see the full Windows App SDK 1.7 release notes.

Try it out

• Download the 1.7.250513003NuGet package to use WinAppSDK 1.7 in your app.
• Download and update the WinUI Gallery to see the WinUI 3 updates firsthand.

Getting Started

To get started using Windows App SDK to develop Windows apps, check out the following documentation:

• Install developer tools .
• Create a WinUI 3 app.
• Continue your development journey.

Windows App SDK 1.8 Experimental 2 introduces exciting new features designed to bring artificial intelligence (AI) to your products with the power of Phi Silica and Windows AI APIs.

The Windows App SDK incorporates advanced Windows AI capabilities, enabling developers to seamlessly integrate intelligent features into their applications. These enhancements include local AI functionalities such as:

• Summarize Conversation feature that allows you to summarize what people have said over an email, chat, or thread. See Phi Silica for more details
• Low-Rank Adaption (LoRA) for Phi Silica allows developers to fine-tune the on-device language model (Phi Silica) using their own custom data.

This release also include the following:

• Decimal support which offers a high-precision base-10 numeric data type that is invaluable for financial and scientific calculations, avoiding imprecision and rounding errors inherent to floating-point data types.
• The Windows App SDK NuGet package has been converted to a NuGet metapackage. The use of individual component packages enables developers to include only the APIs and functionalities that are necessary for their apps.
• The MSIX publishing support has been factored into a standalone nuget package, which can be independently maintained and consumed by Windows App SDK and other projects.
• In addition, several feature gaps with Single-Project solutions have been addressed including generation of MSIX bundles and MSIX upload packages.

For information on responsible development practices utilized during the creation of the Windows AI APIs, which can also be applied when creating AI-assisted features, consult the Developing Responsible Generative AI Applications and Features on Windows guidance.

Windows App SDK 1.6.8 (1.6.250430001)

This is a servicing release of the Windows App SDK that includes critical bug fixes and a new feature for the 1.6 release.

This release includes the following new features for 1.6:

• ApplicationData.MachineFolder is now easier to use on Windows >=10.0.26100.0 (Ge). Windows will create the Machine folder when a package manifesting opt-in support is added to a system if WinAppSDK 1.6.8 is present on the system. For more details see the ApplicationData spec.

This release includes fixes the following critical bugs for 1.6:

• Fixed PackageDeploymentManager telemetry to properly capture when completion status. For more info, see GitHub issue #5297.
• Fixed a crash when using pen input on an x86 app.
• Fixed a potential crash if the window is already destroyed when WinUI is attempting to initialize for scrolling.
• Fixed the WINDOWSAPPSDK_RELEASE_PATCH define and Microsoft::WindowsAppSDK::Release::Patch values in WindowsAppSDK-VersionInfo.h to not always be 0. The define is now the yymmdd date of the build, and the Patch value is the mmdd date. This change provides better runtime information on the version being used without changing any variable sizes or the version scheme.

Check out our release notes for the list of issues fixed in this release.

Updating to this version

The 1.6.8 package is available at https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.WindowsAppSDK/1.6.250430001

Windows App SDK 1.8 Experimental 1 introduces an exciting new features designed to bring artificial intelligence (AI) to your products with the power of Phi Silica and Windows CoPilot Runtime APIs

• Object Erase - the ImageObjectRemover API can be used to remove objects from images. The model takes both an image and a greyscale mask indicating the object to be removed, erases the masked area from the image, and replaces the erased area with the image background.

This release of the Windows App SDK includes bug fixes for the 1.8 release:

• • Fixed an issue where mouse wheel input is ignored if the "Scroll inactive windows when hovering over them" option in Windows Settings is disabled. For more info, see GitHub issue #10091.

Windows App SDK 1.6.7 (1.6.250402001)

Windows App SDK 1.6.7 is a stable servicing release that fixes the following critical bugs for 1.6:

This is a servicing release of the Windows App SDK that includes critical bug fixes for the 1.6 release.

• Improved the telemetry for failure scenarios in WindowsAppRuntimeInstall-<arch>.exe. For more info, see GitHub issue #5291.
• Fixed an issue where pointer input would stop working when using arrow keys at the same time. For more info, see GitHub issue #10126.
• Fixed an issue where apps in remote desktop stop responding to pointer input. For more info, see GitHub issue #10009. (This is the same fix as the pointer input plus arrow keys fix, due to remote desktop automatically sending some key input during the switch away and back.)
• Fixed a potential crash trying to restore focus if a window activation event is delivered for a window which is closing.
• Fixed a performance regression introduced in WinAppSDK 1.6 due to WinUI binaries missing some linker optimizations.
• Fixed a small performance issue when creating multiple WinUI windows/islands.
• Fixed a potential crash if ProgressBar::SetProgressBarIndicatorWidth is called on a ProgressBar which is not in the tree.
• Fixed a potential crash caused by CPopup::EnsureBridgeClosed sometimes triggering reentrancy.
• Fixed a potential crash when closing a popup due to CUIElement::FlushPendingKeepVisibleOperations using a null children collection.
• Fixed PackageDeploymentManager.EnsurePackage*Ready to ensure version supersedence. For more info, see GitHub issue #5225.

Check out our release notes for the list of issues fixed in this release.

Updating to this version

The 1.6.7 package is available at https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.WindowsAppSDK/1.6.250402001

Windows App SDK 1.7.1 (1.7.250401001)

WinAppSDK 1.7.1 is the latest stable version of WinAppSDK providing new features and improvements to the platform.

Whats new in WinAppSDK 1.7.1:

• Improved the telemetry for failure scenarios in WindowsAppRuntimeInstall-<arch>.exe. For more info, see GitHub issue #5289. (RuntimeCompatibilityChange: N/A for this installer change)
• Fixed an issue where pointer input would stop working when using arrow keys at the same time. For more info, see GitHub issue #10126. (RuntimeCompatibilityChange: FixStuckPointerInputQueue)
• Fixed an issue where apps in remote desktop stop responding to pointer input. For more info, see GitHub issue #10009. (This is the same fix as the pointer input plus arrow keys fix, due to remote desktop automatically sending some key input during the switch away and back.) (RuntimeCompatibilityChange: FixStuckPointerInputQueue)
• Fixed a potential crash trying to restore focus if a window activation event is delivered for a window which is closing. (RuntimeCompatibilityChange: FixWindowCloseFocusCrash)
• Fixed a performance regression introduced in WinAppSDK 1.6 due to WinUI binaries missing some linker optimizations. (RuntimeCompatibilityChange: N/A, changed linker options)
• Fixed a potential crash if ProgressBar::SetProgressBarIndicatorWidth is called on a ProgressBar which is not in the tree. (RuntimeCompatibilityChange: FixSetProgressBarIndicatorWidthCrash)
• Fixed a potential crash caused by CPopup::EnsureBridgeClosed sometimes triggering reentrancy. (RuntimeCompatibilityChange: FixPopupClosingReentrancyCrash)
• Fixed a potential crash when closing a popup due to CUIElement::FlushPendingKeepVisibleOperations using a null children collection. (RuntimeCompatibilityChange: FixPopupUnloadingCrash)
• Fixed PackageDeploymentManager.EnsurePackage*Ready to ensure version supersedence. For more info, see GitHub issue #5191. (RuntimeCompatibilityChange: EnsurePackageReadyVersionSupercedence)
• Fixed a potential crash caused by WebView2::UpdateCoreWebViewVisibility sometimes triggering reentrancy. For more info, see GitHub issue #10305. (RuntimeCompatibilityChange: FixWebViewVisibilityReentrancyCrash)
• Fixed an issue where app UI sometimes permanently freezes and can stop rendering due to the DispatcherQueue getting stuck. (RuntimeCompatibilityChange: FixRandomUIFreezeInDispatcher)

Note: Windows Copilot Runtime APIs are not included this release. To experiment with these APIs, please continue to use the 1.7-experimental3 release and share your feedback!

To see everything that's new and changed, see the full Windows App SDK 1.7 release notes.

Try it out

• Download the 1.7.250401001NuGet package to use WinAppSDK 1.7 in your app.
• Download and update the WinUI Gallery to see the WinUI 3 updates firsthand.

Getting Started

To get started using Windows App SDK to develop Windows apps, check out the following documentation:

• Install developer tools .
• Create a WinUI 3 app.
• Continue your development journey.