Microsoft officially "blocked" UWP: It is recommended that developers turn to Windows APP SDK as the future of APP development

Recently, Microsoft announced that it has officially abandoned the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) and switched to the desktop-centric Windows APP SDK (formerly known as Project Reunion) and WinUI 3 as the future of Windows APP development.

In this regard, Microsoft’s Thomas Fennel explained: “The Windows APP SDK is committed to enabling developers to build the most efficient applications on Windows.” In order to achieve this, Microsoft uses existing desktop project types (not UWP) As the foundation of the Windows APP SDK, "because the desktop project type provides a large number of existing desktop APIs and compatibility".

It is reported that the Windows App SDK basically uses key UWP technologies and new technologies such as WinUI 3. These technologies will not be backported (backported) to UWP, but provided to developers in a way that has nothing to do with the specific Windows version. (Just like individual UWP functions). In this way, Microsoft can "provide developers with the agility and backward compatibility they need across the entire Windows ecosystem" without letting developers fall behind.

Microsoft said that in the future UWP will only receive "bugs, reliability and security fixes" and not new features, which means that it has now been officially deprecated.

At present, those developers who already have UWP applications on the market, if they are "satisfied with the existing features of UWP", they can of course continue to use UWP. But for some developers who want "the latest runtime, language and platform features", they want WinUI 3, Web View 2, .NET 5 to be fully compatible with Windows 10 version 1809 or higher, and any upcoming For new features to be introduced, their applications must be migrated to the Windows App SDK.

Although this is a controversial topic for some people, in order to reiterate this obvious fact, Microsoft told the media several years ago that they are actually "blocking" UWP.

It is understood that in the early days, Microsoft planned to use UWP (Universal Windows Platform) as a universal solution for developers to create applications that can run on desktops, mobile devices, and hosts, but the effect is not optimistic.

According to reports, Microsoft’s Project Reunion v0.1 released last year, using WinUI 3 as the UI framework, is trying to integrate the key technologies of Win32 desktop applications and UWP applications. At that time, Project Reunion happened to be the current Windows App SDK.

Although this new information of Microsoft is still a bit vague in front of the public, the official abandonment of UWP also represents a clear official statement to the public, that is, they have taken a step towards the future of Windows application development. Take the first step-a desktop application built using the Windows App SDK, not UWP.

But the good news is that developers who invest time in learning UWP and creating UWP applications can apply their knowledge and experience to create new Windows App SDK applications, or migrate existing applications to this improved and complete Supported platforms.

Regarding this change, industry commentators said, "This is one of Microsoft's biggest advantages as a platform manufacturer: it is committed to not leaving developers behind."

Therefore, although UWP may be transitioning to its "maintenance phase of the life cycle", users who support it can also move on, which sounds like good news.