Windows
Windows
We are excited to announce that Windows App SDK 1.2 is now available! With WinAppSDK 1.2 you can now create widgets for the Windows 11 widget board, use the most modern WinUI controls – including media playback & InfoBadge, and support HDR graphics through the DisplayInformation APIs among other additional features. We have also made several updates to improve platform reliability, stability, and performance to help you create robust, powerful, applications for Windows. Windows App SDK provides a unified set of APIs and tools to help you build beautiful & powerful Windows desktop apps. 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.
With the launch of Windows 11, we introduced the widgets board featuring content curated by Windows. Widgets provide a glanceable view of important information with one touch access from the taskbar or swipe from the left side of a touch screen and are populated by apps currently installed on the device. Now with the launch of Windows App SDK 1.2, we are excited to make this functionality available for third-party developers to create widgets for their packaged Win32 apps and test them locally on the Windows 11 widgets board through our Windows Insider Program. By creating widgets for your apps, your customers can easily and seamlessly stay up to date with information that matters to them. To get started developing Widgets for your app, check out the and for prerequisites, guidance and best practices.
WinUI 3 apps can play audio and video with the and media playback controls. For more info on how and when to use media controls, see . WinUI 3 has been updated with the latest controls, styles, and behaviors from WinUI 2.8. These updates include the addition of the control, improvements to accessibility and high contrast mode, as well as bug fixes across controls. For more details, see the release notes for and .
In Windows App SDK 1.1, we introduced the ability to create and send notifications from your application or a cloud service. App notifications can be used to inform the user of application status or state changes, or to prompt the user to take action with engaging and rich UI. With WinAppSDK 1.2, we’re introducing the , an alternative to XML payload to simplify creating and defining these notifications. To get started using the AppNotificationBuilder to create app notifications, check out the on GitHub. Also see for an example of how to create a desktop Windows application that sends and receives local app notifications.