Microsoft today announced the release of WinUI 3.0 Preview 3.
WinUI 3 is a UI layer that takes the decoupled UWP XAML Visual Layer, the WinUI 2 library, and combines it with more modern features and capabilities. This layer can be used in any Desktop app or UWP app.
Microsoft has been hard at work on Preview 3 since the release of Preview 2 back in July. The update includes countless bug fixes, interesting new capabilities, and improvements on existing capabilities.
Here are some highlights from Preview 3 that are new since Preview 2:
New Features
- ARM64 Support
- Drag and drop inside and outside of apps
- RenderTargetBitmap (only XAML content for now – SwapChainPanel content will be captured later)
- Improvements to our tooling/developer experience:
- Live Visual Tree, Hot Reload, Live Property Explorer and similar tools
- Intellisense now working for WinUI 3
- MRT Core Integration – making apps faster and lighter on startup and providing quicker resource lookup
- Custom cursor support
- Off-thread input APIs
The full release notes and installation instructions can be found here.
The changes continue to advance the capabilities of WinUI 3 for supporting heavy-duty, complex apps.
Since this is a preview release, it is not completely bug-free. A list of known issues and limitations can be found here.
Bugs and feature requests can be posted by opening an issue on the GitHub repo here. Updates on post-Preview 3 planning and features will be posted on the WinUI 3 feature roadmap.