What's supported when migrating from UWP to WinUI 3

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WinUI 3 and the Windows App SDK are new technologies and, when compared to UWP, there are some features that aren't supported. This topic provides information on which features are supported before you attempt migration.

UWP feature WinUI 3 status
Background acrylic ✅ Available via DesktopAcrylicController
Common UI controls ✅ Supported
Composition/DirectX interop ✅ Mostly supported; most Composition features and most Drawing features are available. But using global composition effects isn't supported in 1.5
Distributing via Store ✅ Supported
Live Tiles (on Windows 10) ✅ Supported
MapControl ✅ Supported; see MapControl (introduced in 1.5)
MediaElement and MediaPlayerElement ✅ Use MediaPlayerElement, which was introduced in 1.2
MSAL library ✅ Supported
MSIX ✅ Supported
Single-instancing ✅ Supported
TaskbarManager API ✅ Supported; for details, see TaskbarManager desktop samples
Toast notifications ✅ Supported
Visual Studio App Center ✅ Supported
Background tasks ✅ Supported for C++
⚠️ Partially supported for C# (OOP background tasks supported)
Best launch speed and performance ⚠️ Slight disadvantage, see performance considerations
CoreTextServicesManager ⚠️ Supported only on Windows 11
PrintManager ⚠️ Supported on Windows 11 (not yet available on Windows 10)
CameraCaptureUI ❌ Not supported in 1.5. For alternative APIs, see Using video capture
CoreWindow and related APIs ❌ Not supported in 1.5. For alternative APIs with some of the same functionality, see AppWindow, and HWND-based APIs
Full containerization of your app ❌ Not supported in 1.5
InkCanvas ❌ Not supported in 1.5
Single-app kiosk ❌ Not supported in 1.5
WebAuthenticationBroker ❌ Not supported in 1.5; but see the IWebAuthenticationCoreManagerInterop interface
Xbox and HoloLens support ❌ Not supported in 1.5

Performance considerations

Today in version 1.5 of the Windows App SDK, launch speeds, RAM usage, and installation size of WinUI 3 apps are larger/slower than seen in UWP. We're actively working to improve this.

Visual Studio

The Design tab of the XAML Designer in Visual Studio (and Blend for Visual Studio) doesn't currently support WinUI 3 projects (as of version 1.5 of the Windows App SDK). For more info, see Create a UI by using XAML Designer.

See Also