Windows App SDK 2.0 Announcement

[RDMacLachlan]

Hello WinAppSDK community,

We’re excited to announce an upcoming change to Windows App SDK. For the first time, we will be incrementing the major version number to 2.0. This change is driven by the implementation of the new Windows App SDK versioning scheme being standardized on Semantic Versioning (for more information visit https://semver.org/).

This update simplifies versioning by aligning the Windows App SDK version with the NuGet package version. Now, referencing Windows App SDK 2.0 in your project means you’ll use the corresponding NuGet version—no more confusion. The package family name will also align with the major version instead of the minor version. This means the next side-by-side release of Windows App SDK will be version 3.0.0.

<PackageDependency Name="Microsoft.WindowsAppSDK" Version="2.0.0">

We invite your feedback and insights on additional priorities to ensure the new major version addresses real-world scenarios and add value to your projects. Please let us know your use cases, concerns, or suggestions so we can continue to improve the WinAppSDK together.

Thank you for being an essential part of our community!

[dotMorten]

It's worth pointing out that many of the dependencies of 2.0.0-experimental still uses the old versioning scheme.
For instance WinUI is: 2.0.250930000-experimental.
Once you get to final v2, I assume you'd want to also have WinUI be v2.0.0. But now you have a new final release with a lower version number 2.0.0 than 2.0.250930000-experimental, and the old version will appear as an update to users if you have pre-release enabled, and if you are on pre-release you won't get 2.0.0 offered as an update. I hate to break it to you, but I think the ship has sailed wrt fixing the version numbers for all the packages until you ship 2.1.0.
At the very least you should hide them to avoid some of the confusion.

[riverar]

Incredible error that makes a clean final release impossible. As this is experimental code, a major increment, and usage numbers are small, I'd say yanking/hiding everything (2.x packages) from NuGet and re-trying is on the table.

[mominshaikhdevs]

Once you get to final v2, I assume you'd want to also have WinUI be v2.0.0. But now you have a new final release with a lower version number 2.0.0 than 2.0.250930000-experimental

WinUI 3 v2.0.250930000-experimental

[contextfree]

WinUI III-2

[riverar]

@contextfree Good idea, there is Microsoft Corporation II that could release a WinUI 3 v2.0.

[RDMacLachlan]

Thank you for pointing out the inconsistency with the recent experimental release WinAppSDK 2.0.250930000-experimental1. We apologize for this inconvenience and thank you for your enthusiasm in trying out the latest experimental builds. We’re working on migrating the patch versions across our components.

To address this, we will:

• Keep the current experimental release on NuGet until the next experimental release is ready
• The next experimental release version will be 2.0.0-experimental2
• As part of the next release, we will also un-list the Microsoft.WindowsAppSDK 2.0.250930000-experimental1 from NuGet

For more information, please visit: #5893

[dotMorten]

For the first time, we will be incrementing the major version number to 2.0. This change is driven by the implementation of the new Windows App SDK versioning scheme being standardized on Semantic Versioning

Could someone explain this? I don't see anything breaking with semantic versioning by doing this in v1.9.0 or understand the argument that this is warranting a major release.

The only things I've seen you do to break semantic versioning is to introduce new APIs in patch releases, but that has nothing to do with the versioning scheme itself.

Revving to a major release version just to change the version seems odd. I'd like to rather hear about the opportunities a major version does introduce, like doing house cleaning of dead APIs.

[d2phap]

Please add support for publishing project with class library: #4596

[ChenYiLins]

The version number seems to be meaningless. Is the AI function really important? I don't think this is what most developers expect.

[BigHeadDev]

I hope to have a screen recording function that can record any window, desktop, including sound and video 😍

[BigHeadDev]

I hope to have a screen recording function that can record any window, desktop, including sound and video 😍

[dotMorten]

Yes this it totally doable already: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/audio-video-camera/screen-capture