WinUI is the native UI platform for Windows 10 and is currently under active development by the Windows developer platform team. The library provides a number of benefits which makes it the best way to create user interfaces for Windows apps.
Yesterday Microsoft published the release roadmap of WinUI 3.0, which includes the features that coming up next, and the expected availability date. Here's the list published by the company though they didn't guarantee any changes to it in the future.
According to Microsoft, WinUI 3 will release as a series of preview releases throughout 2020, culminating with v3.0 shipping in 2021. Creating a new WinUI 3 app will be easy using the new Visual Studio 2019 project templates. For existing UWP XAML apps, there will be some updates required when migrating to WinUI 3. These updates will require little effort, with the bulk of most project changes involving find-and-replace namespace changes.
Customer Capability | Preview 2 (July 2020) | Preview 3 (Nov 2020) | WinUI 3.0 (2021) | Post-3.0 (3.x releases) |
---|
Ready for production apps | | | 🟢 | 🟢 |
WinUI in Desktop (Win32) apps* | 🟢 | 🟢 | 🟢 | 🟢 |
Supports MSIX Deployment | 🟢 | 🟢 | 🟢 | 🟢 |
Supports non-MSIX deployment | | | | 🟢 |
WinUI works downlevel to Windows 10 version 1803 and above | 🟢 | 🟢 | 🟢 | 🟢 |
ARM64 support | | 🟢 | 🟢 | 🟢 |
.NET 5 Support for UWP apps | | | | 🟢 |
.NET 5 Support for Desktop apps | 🟢 | 🟢 | 🟢 | 🟢 |
Works on Windows 10X | | | | 🟢 |
Works on additional Windows form factors (Xbox, HoloLens, IoT, Surface Hub) | | | | 🟢 |
<SwapChainPanel> | 🟢 | 🟢 | 🟢 | 🟢 |
Off-thread input for SwapChainPanels | | | 🟪 | 🟢 |
Chromium-based WebView2 | 🟢 | 🟢 | 🟢 | 🟢 |
Title Bar customization for UWP apps | | | | 🟢 |
Title Bar customization for Desktop apps | 🔷 | 🔷 | 🟢 | 🟢 |
XAML Islands | | | | 🟢 |
Multi-window support for Desktop apps | 🔷 | 🟢 | 🟢 | 🟢 |
Drag and drop | | 🟢 | 🟢 | 🟢 |
Acrylic material | | | | 🟢 |
Reveal Highlight | | | | 🟢 |
Fluent Shadows | 🔷 | 🔷 | 🔷 | 🟢 |
Rounded corners | | | | 🟢 |
Media Controls | | | | 🟢 |
Input validation for data fields | 🔷 | 🔷 | 🟪 | 🟢 |
<MapControl> | | | | 🟪 |
<InkCanvas> | | | | 🟢 |
RenderTargetBitmap | | | 🟪 | 🟢 |
Legend
🟢 - Included, or planned to be included
🔷 - Partial capability
🟪 - Stretch goal
Blank - Not included, or not planned to be included
According to the company, the information shared above can and likely be changed as the project continues development. The feature availability dates listed above are the team's current goals and expectations but are not promises or guarantees. You should check the live link periodically for the latest updates.