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Preview channel release notes for the Windows App SDK 1.2

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Important

The preview channel is not supported for use in production environments, and apps that use the preview releases cannot be published to the Microsoft Store.

The preview channel includes releases of the Windows App SDK with preview channel features in late stages of development. Preview releases do not include experimental features and APIs but may still be subject to breaking changes before the next stable release.

Important links:

Latest preview channel release:

Latest stable channel release:

Version 1.2 Preview 2 (1.2.0-preview2)

This is the latest release of the preview channel for version 1.2.

In an existing Windows App SDK 1.1 (from the stable channel) app, you can update your Nuget package to 1.2.0-preview2 (see the Update a package section in Install and manage packages in Visual Studio using the NuGet Package Manager).

For the updated runtime and MSIX, see Latest Windows App SDK downloads.

Important

Visual Studio 2019 and .NET 5 is no longer supported for building C# apps (see Windows App SDK 1.2 moving to C# WinRT 2.0). You will need Visual Studio 2022 and one of the following .NET SDK versions: 6.0.401 (or later), 6.0.304, 6.0.109.

To update your .NET SDK version, install the latest version of Visual Studio 2022 or visit .NET Downloads. When updating your NuGet package without the required .NET SDK version, you will see an error like: "This version of WindowsAppSDK requires .NET 6+ and WinRT.Runtime.dll version 2.0 or greater.". To update the project from .NET 5.0 to .NET 6.0, open the project file and change "TargetFramework" to net6.0 and "Target OS version" to the appropriate value (such as net6.0-windows10.0.19041.0).

Third-party Widgets in Windows

The Widgets Board was first introduced in Windows 11 and was limited to displaying first party Widgets. Widgets are small UI containers that display text and graphics on the Widgets Board, and are associated with an app installed on the device. With Windows App SDK, as third party developers you can now create Widgets for your packaged Win32 apps and test them locally on the Windows 11 Widgets Board.

For more information about Widgets, check out Widgets overview.

To get started developing Widgets for your app, check out the Widget providers development docs and Widgets design fundamentals for prerequisites, guidance and best practices.

Prerequisites for this release include:

  • Developer mode enabled on the development machine.
  • The development machine is running a version of Windows from the Dev Channel of the Windows Insider Program (WIP) with Widgets Board version 521.20060.1205.0 or above.

Known limitations when developing Widgets

  • Third-party Widgets can only be tested locally on devices enrolled in WIP for this preview release. In Windows App SDK 1.2.0, users on retail versions of Windows can begin acquiring 3P Widgets via Microsoft Store shipped versions of your app.
  • Widgets can only be created for packaged, Win32 apps. Widgets for Progressive Web Apps (PWA) are planned to be supported as part of Microsoft Edge 108.

Trimming for apps developed with .NET

.NET developers are now able to publish their WinAppSDK apps trimmed. With CsWinRT 2.0, the C#/WinRT projections distributed in WinAppSDK are now trimmable. Publishing your app trimmed can reduce the disk footprint of your app by removing any unused code from trimmable binaries. Apps may also see a startup performance improvement. With a basic Hello World app, we have seen a ~80% disk footprint improvement and a ~7% startup performance improvement when published trimmed. With WinUI gallery, we have seen a ~45% disk footprint improvement.

For more details on how to enable trimming, trimming limitations (such as reflection against trimmable types), and trim warnings, see Trim self-contained deployments and executables. Developers should thoroughly test their apps after trimming to ensure everything works as expected. For more information, check out issue 2478 on GitHub.

DisplayInformation

Win32 apps can now support High Dynamic Range (HDR) through the DisplayInformation class in WinAppSDK. The DisplayInformation class enables you to monitor display-related information for an application view. This includes events to allow clients to monitor for changes in the application view affecting which display(s) the view resides on, as well as changes in displays that can affect the application view.

Fixed issues in WinUI 3

  • Acrylic backdrop material via DesktopAcrylicController is now supported in Windows 10 apps. For more information, check out issue 7112 on GitHub.
  • Fixed issue causing App.UnhandledException to fail to be routed to the application. For more information, check out issue 5221 on GitHub.
  • Fixed issue causing ListView styles to regress and change from WinAppSDK 1.1. For more information, check out issue 7666 on GitHub.

Other limitations and known issues (1.2.0-preview2)

Important

When you reference WinAppSDK 1.2 from a project you might see an error similar to: "Detected package downgrade: Microsoft.Windows.SDK.BuildTools from 10.0.22621.1 to 10.0.22000.194.", which is caused by incompatible references to the package from the app project and the WinAppSDK package. To resolve this you can update the reference in the project to a more recent and compatible version of Microsoft.Windows.SDK.BuildTools, or simply remove the reference from your project. If you remove it from your project, a compatible version will be implicitly referenced by the WinAppSDK package.

  • Building with Arm64 Visual Studio is not currently supported.
  • Bootstrapper and Undocked RegFree WinRT auto-initializer defaults is (now) only set for projects that produce an executable (OutputType=Exe or WinExe). This prevents adding auto-initializers into class library DLLs and other non-executables by default.
    • If you need an auto-initializer in a non-executable (e.g. a test DLL loaded by a generic executable that doesn't initialize the Bootstrapper) you can explicitly enable an auto-initializer in your project via <WindowsAppSdkBootstrapInitialize>true</WindowsAppSdkBootstrapInitialize> or <WindowsAppSdkUndockedRegFreeWinRTInitialize>true</WindowsAppSdkUndockedRegFreeWinRTInitialize>.
  • The version information APIs (ReleaseInfo and RuntimeInfo) can be called but return version 0 (not the actual version information).

Version 1.2 Preview 1 (1.2.0-preview1)

In an existing Windows App SDK 1.1 (from the stable channel) app, you can update your Nuget package to 1.2.0-preview1 (see the Update a package section in Install and manage packages in Visual Studio using the NuGet Package Manager).

For the updated runtime and MSIX, see Latest Windows App SDK downloads.

WinUI 3

WinUI 3 apps can play audio and video with the MediaPlayerElement and MediaTransportControls media playback controls. For more info on how and when to use media controls, see Media players.

WinUI 3 has been updated with the latest controls, styles, and behaviors from WinUI 2.8. These updates include the addition of the InfoBadge control, improvements to accessibility and high contrast mode, as well as bug fixes across controls. For more details, see the release notes for WinUI 2.7 and WinUI 2.8.

Known issue

ListView styles regressed and changed from WinAppSDK 1.1.

Notifications

AppNotificationBuilder introduced as an alternative to XML payload for creating and defining App Notifications.

For usage information, see the AppNotificationBuilder spec on GitHub.

Also see Quickstart: App notifications in the Windows App SDK for an example of how to create a desktop Windows application that sends and receives local app notifications.

Breaking change

For push notifications, when making a channel request call, apps will need to use the Azure Object ID instead of the Azure App ID. See Quickstart: Push notification in the Windows App SDK for details on finding your Azure Object ID.

Fixed issue

PushNotificationManager.IsSupported will perform a check for elevated mode. It will return false if the app is elevated.

Known limitations (Notifications)

Windowing

Full title bar customization is now available on Windows 10, version 1809 and later through the AppWindowTitleBar class. You can set AppWindowTitleBar.ExtendsContentIntoTitleBar to true to extend content into the title bar area, and SetDragRectangles to define drag regions (in addition to other customization options).

If you've been using the AppWindowTitleBar.IsCustomizationSupported property to check whether you can call the AppWindowTitleBar APIs, it now returns true on supported Windows App SDK Windows 10 versions (1809 and later).

Known limitations (Windowing)

Simple title bar customizations are not supported on Windows 10. These include BackgroundColor, InactiveBackgroundColor, ForegroundColor, InactiveForegroundColor and IconShowOptions. If you call these properties, they will be ignored silently. All other AppWindowTitleBar APIs work in Windows 10, version 1809 and later. For the caption button color APIs (among others) and Height, ExtendsContentIntoTitleBar must be set to true, otherwise they will also be ignored silently.

Access control

Introduced security.accesscontrol.h with the GetSecurityDescriptorForAppContainerNames function to ease and streamline named object sharing between packaged processes and general Win32 APIs. This method takes a list of Package Family Names (PFNs) and access masks, and returns a security descriptor. For more information, see the GetSecurityDescriptorForAppContainerNames spec on GitHub.

Other limitations and known issues (1.2.0-preview1)

  • .NET PublishSingleFile isn't supported.