desktop bridge

Microsoft’s app-store experiment started with a clear promise — a single, safe place to find and automatically update Windows software — but for more than a decade the reality was a sequence of missteps, confusing platform shifts, and fragmented developer incentives that left most PC users...

Windows 11 continues to evolve as Microsoft introduces features that increasingly blur the line between PCs and mobile devices, responding to the ever-growing demand for seamless cross-platform experiences. One of the most notable developments in the recent Windows 11 24H2 update, specifically...

Today is an exciting day for Windows 10 on ARM. With the official release of Visual Studio 15.9, developers now have the officially supported SDK and tools for creating 64-bit ARM (ARM64) apps. In addition, the Microsoft Store is now officially accepting submissions for apps built for the ARM64...

XAML Islands is a technology that enables Windows developers to use new pieces of UI from the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) on their existing Win32 Applications, including Windows Forms and WPF technologies. This allows them to gradually modernize their apps at their own pace, making use of...

Visual Studio 2017 15.4 introduced the new Windows Application Packaging project to help you modernizing your application by using the new Windows 10 App Deployment Stack. We talked about it in our previous post: Visual Studio 2017 Update 4 makes it easy to modernize your app and make it store...

Last year with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, we introduced the Desktop Bridge to provide desktop applications a path to modernize with the Universal Windows Platform, and to distribute via the Windows Store and the Microsoft Store for Business to all Windows 10 PCs, including devices that...

For a long time, desktop PC users have been able to configure Win32 apps to start at startup or user log-in. This has also been possible for Desktop Bridge apps since the Windows 10 Anniversary Update (v10.0.14393.0). We’ve now extended this feature to allow regular Universal Windows Apps to...

In today’s post, we are covering another step you can take on your journey across the Desktop Bridge: specifically migrating business logic to Windows Runtime Components, aka WinRT Components. Previously, Windows only supported calling OS provided WinRT components from Win32 applications. Any...

As we continue to close the gap between Win32 and Universal Windows Apps, one of the features we’ve recently introduced is the ability to activate a UWA from a command line and pass the app arbitrary command-line arguments. This is available to Insiders from build 16226. This feature builds on...

Overview Windows 10 S is a specific configuration of Windows 10 Pro that offers a familiar, productive Windows experience that’s streamlined for security and performance. By exclusively using apps in the Windows Store and ensuring that you browse safely with Microsoft Edge, Windows 10 S keeps...

Last week, Microsoft welcomed thousands of developers from around the world to Build 2017, where we shared our vision for the future of dozens of products and services. Build featured a number of exciting sessions for developers building sites and apps with web technologies, including a peek at...

The Windows 10 Creators Update adds out-of-process (OOP) COM and OLE support for apps on the Desktop Bridge – a.k.a Packaged COM. Historically, Win32 apps would create COM extensions that other applications could use. For example, Microsoft Excel exposes its Excel.Application object so...

Overview The Creators Update is packed with new features for app developers and end users that are designed to delight developers who can offer their end users a rich experience. User transition & data migration Users are encouraged to download the store version of their desktop apps. If...

With last summer’s release of the Windows 10 Anniversary Update and the announcement of the Windows Store supporting apps built with the Desktop Bridge technology, we want to share more details and sample code on how to further enhance and extend your PC software on Windows 10. In addition to...

In today’s post, we’re covering how PC software can leverage the rich functionality of Windows 10. This is valuable background for the upcoming post “Adding UWP Features to Your Existing PC Software with the Desktop Bridge,” which will go into even more detail on the topic in the coming days...

The UWPDesktop NuGet package is here to improve the developer experience with Visual Studio when walking along the Desktop Bridge. The Desktop Bridge allows you to call UWP APIs directly from your WinForms, WPF or VB application. You can use APIs such as Live tiles, notifications, App Services...

A few months ago, during Build 2016, we announced the Desktop Bridge, enabling developers to bring their existing desktop apps and games over to the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) by converting their app or game with the Desktop App Converter and then enhancing and extending it with UWP...

Today I’m pleased to announce that following the Windows 10 Anniversary Update we have released the Windows 10 Anniversary Update SDK, build 14393 along with Visual Studio 2015 Update 3. The new SDK contains more than 2700 enhancements to the Universal Windows Platform allowing you to take...

Continuing in our series on using the Desktop Bridge to bring your existing desktop apps to the Universal Windows Platform (UWP), let’s follow up last month’s post on the path from a desktop app to a UWP app with more information on choosing the path forward. First of all, we want to highlight...

Last month, we provided an overview of the Desktop Bridge in this blog post. We are excited to announce that since then we’ve released a new version of the desktop app converter, adding support for great new features and fixing several issues to provide a more stable environment. To learn more...