One of the comments on that blog leads to WinUI, which I would assume Microsoft would recommend first
https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/blob/master/d...
Not sure if it's cross-platform though.
In ElectronCGI – A Solution to Cross-Platform GUIs for .NET Coremicrosoft
microsoft-ui-xaml
C++2018–2026
microsoft / microsoft-ui-xaml
microsoft-ui-xaml
WinUI: a modern UI framework with a rich set of controls and styles to build dynamic and high-performing Windows applications.
29Distinct people
55Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
8.6KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
WinUI: a modern UI framework with a rich set of controls and styles to build dynamic and high-performing Windows applications.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- microsoft/cppwinrt · linked in 4 of the same discussions
- microsoft/windowsappsdk · linked in 3 of the same discussions
- dotnet/wpf · linked in 2 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 7:02:26 AM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year55 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2018-12-04 17:29:04 UTC to 2026-08-29 19:04:23 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 16 | 3 | 13 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 0 | 7 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 2 | 4 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 2 | 4 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 1 | 6 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 2 | 2 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
WinUI
About WinUI
·
Documentation
·
Release notes
WinUI is a user interface layer that contains modern controls and styles for building Windows apps. The current generation is WinUI 3, which ships as part of the Windows App SDK.
Modern UI: WinUI embodies Fluent Design to enable intuitive, accessible, and powerful experiences and the latest user interface patterns.
Developers in control: Use .NET with C# or C++ to write apps that run great on x86, x64 and ARM.
Optimized for modern experiences & hardware: Create performant experiences with WinUI that are optimized for modern hardware.
Part of the Windows App SDK: The Windows App SDK is a set of libraries, frameworks, components, and tools that you can use in your apps to access powerful Windows platform functionality from all kinds of apps on many versions of Windows. The Windows App SDK combines the powers of Win32 native applications alongside modern API usage techniques, so your apps light up everywhere your users are.
Powers key experiences in Windows: Windows experiences and apps are built with WinUI. Its rich control set and styles make it easy to develop high-quality experiences used by millions every day.
📋 Getting started with WinUI
For WinUI, your app's users must be on Windows 10 1809 - Build 17763 or newer (including Windows Insider Previews).
The full documentation of WinUI can be found on Microsoft Learn:
Get started with WinUI
Build your first WinUI app
Migrate from UWP to the Windows App SDK
Windows Runtime APIs not supported in desktop apps
WinUI & Windows App SDK samples
🖼️ WinUI 3 Gallery
Make sure to also check out the WinUI 3 Gallery, our interactive sample experience showing everything you can do with WinUI.
📺 WinUI Community Call
The WinUI Community Call is your opportunity to learn about WinUI and to engage with the WinUI team and community. Join us online on YouTube at the Windows Developer channel.
📢 Contributing to WinUI
The WinUI team welcomes your feedback! To understand how we handle incoming feature requests and bugs, please see our contribution handling guidelines.
For information on how to contribute, please see Contributing to WinUI.
WarningWe're not yet ready to accept code contributions, but we are working towards that goal. It is now
possible to build the WinUI product binaries, with work in progress to share test code and enabling
locally running tests. To get started building WinUI from source and see more details on current
limitations, see Getting started with building WinUI. See the
WinUI OSS Update post to check the
latest status.
For the latest code and updates, use the main branch.
🛣️ Roadmap
For info on the WinUI release schedule and high level plans please see the WinUI roadmap.
🔧 WinUI for UWP
WinUI for UWP (WinUI 2) is a library of controls that provides Microsoft UI controls and features for UWP apps. Learn more about WinUI for UWP here or download the source code here.
You can get the WinUI 2 Gallery on the Microsoft Store and see the source code here.
Data/Telemetry
This project collects usage data and sends it to Microsoft to help improve our products and services. Note, however, that no data collection is performed when using your private builds.
Code of Conduct
This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct.
For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or
contact opencode@microsoft.com with any additional questions or comments.
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
16 sourcesI am getting the impression the author is fighting yesterday’s war and on top of that has not been following what's going on in windows/.Net development lately.
There has been a large-scale effort to open-source and port chunks of Windows and .Net Framework
WinForms 'the win95-style UI' https://github.com/dotnet/winforms
WPF 'the Vista-style UI'
https://github.com/dotnet/wpf
WinUI3 'the Modern-style UI'
https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml
Windows Communications Foundation https://github.com/dotnet/wcf
And more stuff I am not aware of. Judge as you wish, but if you are going to discuss the topic, they are important.
In Microsoft's “Love” of LinuxWindows UI Library Roadmap Update
2 points · Open discussionIt's a good thing Microsoft doesn't think that way. It apparently has metrics that show desktop development is not stagnating, but rising thanks in part to Windows desktop OS usage also rising [1]. See its plans for WinUI v3 [2]. WinUI is not cross-platform but it is talking about it.
[1] Comments from Ryan at MS https://www.dotnetrocks.com/?show=1660
[2] https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/blob/master/d...
In How Swift Achieved Dynamic Linking Where Rust Couldn'tFirst WinUI 3.0 Alpha now available
2 points · Open discussionThe "new" UI kit (WinUI) is the one from UWP, it's just being decoupled from Windows releases
https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/blob/master/d...
In Run .NET Core Apps Directly from a GitHub GistDo you have examples of those? I'm not an expert at all on this topic, but WPF and WinForms have been released in 2006 and can still be used to develop windows graphical applications as far as I understand.
Even better as far as I can tell, WPF, WinForms, and WinUI are open source since 2018: https://www.hanselman.com/blog/AnnouncingWPFWinFormsAndWinUI...
Repositories:
- WPF: https://github.com/dotnet/wpf
- WinForms: https://github.com/dotnet/winformsblog-scottha
- WinUI: https://github.com/Microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml
Now, I'm not familiar with those technologies, and don't use them, so I may be missing some things.
In SwiftWebUI> what their long term strategy is (besides masquerading as the new champion of open-source), and that doesn't inspire confidence.
The WinUI team started to publish publicly about their roadmap, you can see some information here: https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/blob/master/d...
So, I'm not a windows developer and I'm not familiar with their APIs and technologies, but they seem describe a clear strategy for "WinUI 3.0" as far as I can tell.
In SwiftWebUIEveryone seems to have their own definitions of what is or isn't "dead" or what is or isn't UWP, but as far as Windows native development is concerned, they are still producing new versions of WinUI with new features and new versions of Windows are still adding new WinRT APIs. https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/blob/master/d...
In Files UWP: An enthusiast’s take on what Windows File Explorer explorer should beNope,
WinUI roadmap
https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/blob/master/d...
React Native for Windows rewrite on top of WinUI
https://github.com/microsoft/react-native-windows
Announcement done during last month's BUILD.
UWP is live and well as Win32's successor.
In Microsoft’s Universal Windows Platform app dream is dead and buriedActually not,
https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/blob/master/d...
React Native for Windows is being ported from C# into WinUI/C++.
https://github.com/microsoft/react-native-windows
Plus these guys should spend more time at BUILD and MSDN.
All major Windows 10 APIs are UWP only, even if the store is gone, UWP is here to stay.
In Microsoft’s Universal Windows Platform app dream is dead and buriedWindows UI platform team recently posted their roadmap for the platform https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/blob/master/d... and they have a GitHub issue thread requesting comment on the roadmap https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/issues/717 , you might want to take a look and post your thoughts
In Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) on GitHubLatest example, WinUI roadmap doesn't consider F# relevant.
https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/blob/master/d...
Guess what is one of the complains on the feedback thread?
In A whirlwind tour of object-oriented code in F# (2012)I will say WinUI instead then.
https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/blob/master/d...
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