Integrating APIs from the Universal Windows Platform

Since the introduction of Windows 10, the Windows team has deeply invested in the Universal Windows Platform (UWP). Consequently, UWP became the entry point for all developers to enable any new feature added to Windows. However, in the past, this meant that only by building UWP apps were you able to integrate new features such as Windows Hello, geolocation, the sharing contract, and so on. As we discussed in Chapter 1, Getting Started with the Windows App SDK and WinUI, this approach led to slow adoption of the platform, especially by enterprise developers, since most of the time it meant rewriting existing .NET applications almost from scratch.

In recent years, as such, the Windows team has worked on ways to enable the usage of the UWP ecosystem in existing .NET applications, leading developers to enhance their existing applications with new features, without the need to restart from scratch with new technology.

The most...