Microsoft.WindowsAppSDK.WinUI.CSharp.Templates 0.0.3-alpha

Windows App SDK WinUI 3 C# Templates

Official WinUI 3 project and item templates for the Windows App SDK, designed for use with the .NET CLI (dotnet new). This template pack provides the same starting points available in Visual Studio — blank apps, navigation views, class libraries, unit test projects, and common WinUI UI items — right from the command line.

Installation

dotnet new install Microsoft.WindowsAppSDK.WinUI.CSharp.Templates

Available Templates

Project Templates

Item Templates

Item templates are context-aware and only surface when dotnet new is executed inside a WinUI project folder or when --project points to one.

Quick Start

Create a new WinUI 3 app

dotnet new winui -n MyApp
cd MyApp
dotnet build -p:Platform=x64
dotnet run -c Debug -p:Platform=x64

Add items to an existing project

dotnet new winui-page -n SettingsPage --project .\MyApp.csproj
dotnet new winui-usercontrol -n ProfileCard --project .\MyApp.csproj
dotnet new winui-window -n SecondaryWindow --project .\MyApp.csproj

Choosing a Target Framework

By default, templates automatically detect your installed .NET SDK version and set the target framework accordingly. For example, if you have .NET 10 SDK installed, the TFM will be net10.0-windows10.0.26100.0.

To target a specific .NET version instead, pass --dotnet-version:

dotnet new winui --dotnet-version net8.0 -n MyApp

You can also edit the generated .csproj afterward and change <TargetFramework> (and any related <RuntimeIdentifiers> entries) to your preferred TFM.

Prerequisites

• .NET 10 SDK or later
• Windows 10 version 1809 (build 17763) or later
• Windows App SDK workload

Resources

• Windows App SDK documentation
• WinUI 3 documentation
• Release notes
• File an issue

Contributing

This template pack is built from the WindowsAppSDK repository under dev/VSIX/DotnetNewTemplates/. The templates share the same XAML, code-behind, and project files as the Visual Studio templates under dev/VSIX/ProjectTemplates/ and dev/VSIX/ItemTemplates/, so there is only one copy to maintain.

Local Testing

1. Pack the templates:

   dotnet pack dev/VSIX/DotnetNewTemplates/WinAppSdk.CSharp.DotnetNewTemplates.csproj -c Release -o localpackages
   

2. Uninstall any previous version:

   dotnet new uninstall Microsoft.WindowsAppSDK.WinUI.CSharp.Templates
   

3. Install the local package:

   dotnet new install ./localpackages/Microsoft.WindowsAppSDK.WinUI.CSharp.Templates.<version>.nupkg
   

Validation Checklist

• Run dotnet pack locally and dotnet new install to verify each template scaffolds and builds.
• Run dotnet new list | findstr winui to confirm all templates are registered.
• Build generated projects for x64, x86, and ARM64 in Visual Studio or VS Code.
• Test packaged deployments on Windows 10 version 1809 or later.