Hardware notifications design guide

Describes support for key buttons (Power, Windows, volume and rotation lock) and other indicators in a standardized way, together with associated corresponding Windows Engineering Guidance (WEG).

In this section

Topic	Description
GPIO buttons and indicators implementation guide	Windows 8 introduced support for general-purpose I/O (GPIO) buttons and indicators by using a HID miniport class driver. The goal was to provide support for key buttons (Power, Windows, volume and rotation lock) in a standardized way, together with associated corresponding Windows Engineering Guidance (WEG). Windows 8.1 is focused on enhancing the quality of the end-to-end user experience and unifying the behavior across various innovative form factors.
GPIO buttons and indicators supplemental testing	This topic describes Windows 8.1 test scenarios for hardware buttons and indicators, to ensure an optimal user experience for various form factors.
Hardware notifications support	Windows 10, version 1709 provides an infrastructure for the hardware-agnostic support of notification components such as LEDs and vibration mechanisms. This support is delivered through the introduction of a Kernel-Mode Driver Framework (KMDF) class extension specifically for hardware notification components that allows for the rapid development of client drivers. A KMDF class extension is essentially a KMDF driver that provides a defined set of functionality for a given class of devices, similar to a port driver in the Windows Driver Model (WDM). This section provides an overview of the architecture of the hardware notification class extension. For additional information about the KMDF, see Using WDF to Develop a Driver.