The wait is over! The new, modern native UI platform of Windows – WinUI 3 – has been officially released to the public, alongside Project Reunion 0.5. To empower you to have #WinUIEverywhere on the day it launches we are also releasing Uno Platform 3.6. Our appreciation goes to Microsoft WindowsUI team for keeping us posted so we are able to have day-0 support for WinUI 3 and Project Reunion 0.5 .
In addition to WinUI support, we are also releasing the highly-requested DatePicker and File Pickers (Open, Save, Folder), a new Cupertino-like theme, OpenId Connect, WebAuthenticationBroker and are continuing support Windows Community Toolkit and its newest release – 7.0! Lastly, we have restructured and added more documentation to our docs – one of the main improvements you asked for in our annual survey.
About Uno Platform
For those new to Uno Platform – it allows for creation of pixel-perfect, single-source C# and XAML apps which run natively on Windows, iOS, Android, macOS, Linux and Web via WebAssembly. Uno Platform is free and Open Source (Apache 2.0) and available on GitHub.
WinUI 3, Project Reunion on Web, Linux, macOS, iOS and Android
We believed in WinUI since its inception and chose our mission to be enabling developers to use C# and Windows XAML to target all platforms. To you as a developer means that that you are able to leverage everything that has been invested in Windows developer ecosystem to date, such as code samples and documentation, accessibility, localization, security, keyboard, and touch inputs, 3rd party components providers etc. and reuse all of it for the target platforms you care about.
Almost 800,000 NuGet downloads later, even while WinUI has been in previews, tell us that we have developed a multi-platform UI framework for the future. Most importantly, Uno Platform is developed in the open, together with you, under a sustainable model to ensure its longevity.
“With WinUI 3 – Project reunion 0.5 we are making investments to enable developers to improve Windows experiences. We are pleased to see open source projects like Uno Platform take that mission further by extending the reach of WinUI to Web, Linux, macOS, iOS and Android.” – said Microsoft Partner Group Program Manager, Mike Harsh at our 3.6 official Press Release.
Our commitment to you is that we will remain close to WinUI and continue shipping in lock-step with Microsoft so you can use both Uno and WinUI seamlessly. In fact, Uno Platform was the first project to take on WinUI as dependency:
DatePicker
The DatePicker gives you a standardized way to let users pick a localized date value using touch, mouse, or keyboard input. This is a great story of code reuse as we were able to take over 11,000 lines of C++ code as well as over 600 lines of XAML unchanged code and make it run on additional 5 platforms. In addition, we were able to reuse over 30 unit tests from WinUI.
File Operations
You can now easily pick files and folders across Windows, Android, iOS, macOS and even Web/WebAssembly using native file picker dialogs – all with a single unified API! For examples and tips, check out our docs! This means you have only one source-file to maintain for any file picking operations, and when file dialog comes up it will look native to the platform your user is on.
Cupertino Theme
A few months ago, we provided you with Fluent UI and Material themes to allow you to build beautiful applications faster. Today we are adding one more theme – Cupertino. Check out Uno Gallery to see all supported controls in Fluent / Material / Cupertino themes, side-by-side and decide what designs fit your use case.
Windows Community Toolkit (WCT) 7.0
WCT is a Microsoft-supported library of controls like DataGrid and Expander that provide advanced functionality on top of what is available in the base framework. While we have supported WCT for a long time, we have also worked closely with the WCT team and open-source community to make sure Uno is compatible with WCT on the day it launches. We are pleased to announce you can use WCT 7.0 in your projects.
To use WCT components in your Uno-powered applications please see our docs on Windows Community Toolkit on Uno Platform. Or here are code samples for a few typical controls devs use DataGrid (Sample, Docs, API Reference) and Expander: (Sample, Docs, API Reference)
Next Steps
You can browse the full changelog on our GitHub releases page. To upgrade to latest release of Uno Platform, please update your packages to 3.6 via your Visual Studio NuGet package manager! If you are new to Uno Platform, the best way to get started is following our official getting started guide.(5 min to complete)
Uno Platform Team
