microsoft/WindowsAppSDK

Features

• Windows Desktop Development - Provides the APIs and UI frameworks for building native, high-performance applications for Windows.
• Native Desktop Application Frameworks - Provides a framework for creating native desktop applications that utilize the host operating system's native UI widgets.
• Runtime Distributions - Distributes the necessary execution environment with the application regardless of the packaging method.
• High-Fidelity UI Rendering - Produces high-fidelity user experiences with advanced pixel rendering and smooth animations optimized for modern hardware.
• Application Lifecycle Management - Handles how applications start, manage multiple instances, and respond to system power or activation triggers.
• Application Packaging - Bundles applications into distribution formats and manages installation across different operating system versions.
• Desktop App Deployment Frameworks - Provides a system for managing app lifecycles, runtime dependencies, and packaging for Windows applications.
• GPU-Accelerated UI Rendering - Uses GPU-backed layout and pixel pipelines to produce high-fidelity user interfaces and resolution-independent text.
• Windows API Runtimes - Provides native interfaces for accessing system capabilities, hardware acceleration, and operating system services.
• Platform API Access - Provides a unified interface for accessing native operating system capabilities and modern desktop user interface elements.
• Windows Runtime Projections - Provides a native C++ projection of Windows Runtime APIs for high-performance system interactions.
• Legacy Software Modernization - Enables adding modern UI and platform capabilities to existing desktop projects without a full rewrite.
• Accessible Design Systems - Provides a comprehensive design system of themed components that prioritize accessibility standards.
• Desktop Windowing Management - Manages desktop-specific user interactions including window control and appearance synchronization.
• Input Method Detection - Identifies whether a user is interacting via touch, mouse, pen, or keyboard to adapt the UI.
• Interface Composition Frameworks - Enables the construction of complex layouts through the composition of pre-built UI components and styles.
• Windows Frameworks - Provides a set of APIs and UI frameworks specifically designed for building native applications on Windows.
• Native Windows UI Renderers - Provides hardware-accelerated rendering and support for diverse input methods for native Windows user interfaces.
• Local On-Device AI - Enables execution of hardware-accelerated AI models on local CPUs, GPUs, and NPUs within desktop applications.
• Local AI Execution Environments - Provides an environment for running hardware-accelerated artificial intelligence models on local CPUs, GPUs, and NPUs.
• Local Model Execution - Provides capabilities for running artificial intelligence models directly on local CPUs, GPUs, and NPUs for optimized inference performance.
• Runtime Distribution Bundles - Bundles the required runtime and dependencies with the application to ensure version compatibility.
• Unpackaged Runtime Bootstrapping - Bootstraps the required environment for unpackaged desktop applications using automatic configuration or explicit calls.
• Window Appearance Customizers - Configures advanced window properties such as placement, appearance, and visual effects.
• Static Resource Retrieval - Fetches localized strings, graphics, and layout files from a centralized resource manager.
• SDK Version Migrations - Offers automated tooling to transform legacy codebases to align with modern SDK versions.
• Windows Packages - Manages the packaging and distribution of runtimes and dependencies for Windows desktop applications.
• NuGet-Based Distributions - Distributes runtime binaries and API definitions as NuGet packages to decouple framework versions from the OS.
• High-Performance Text Rendering - Displays resolution-independent fonts and Unicode text using a hardware-accelerated layout system.
• Application Asset Management - Handles strings and images across multiple languages and scales independently of core application logic.
• Shared Runtime Components - Distributes shared API definitions and binaries via a system-wide package to avoid redundant bundling.
• Runtime Bootstrapping - Provides mechanisms to initialize the runtime environment and load dependencies for unpackaged applications.
• Application Sandboxing - Restricts access to system resources via a sandbox environment to enhance security and protect the host.
• App Bootstrap & Identity - Initializes the runtime environment and loads framework dependencies for applications not deployed as standard packages.
• MVVM Architectures - Supports structuring application logic using the Model-View-ViewModel pattern to decouple data from the user interface.
• Side-by-Side Runtimes - Allows multiple versions of the framework to exist and run simultaneously without conflicting with the system image.

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