Microsoft to unify app development for 1 billion Windows 10 devices

Project Reunion will make it easier to build great apps that work across all the Windows 10 versions and devices people use.

"For the past couple of years, we have been breaking down the barrier between Win32 (also called the Windows API) and Universal Windows Platform (UWP) APIs. Project Reunion expands this effort to make it easier to build a great Windows app," the company announced during its ‘Build 2020' developer conference.

It will unify access to existing Win32 and UWP APIs and make them available decoupled from the OS, via tools like "NuGet". This will provide a common platform for new apps.

"Plus, it will help you update and modernize your existing apps with the latest functionality, whether they're C++, .NET (including WPF, Windows Forms, and UWP) or React Native," said Microsoft.

One of the first components in the Project Reunion journey is WinUI 3 Preview 1, the high performant, Fluent-optimized native UI framework for Windows.

With WinUI developers can build great user experiences that adapt and scale across devices, whether they are starting a new project, or modernizing an existing app, according to the company.

Microsoft also expanded WebView2 (another component in the Project Reunion journey) with a new .NET Preview.

Now, any Windows app can embed web content with the power of Microsoft Edge and Chromium.

As organisations shift to enable remote work, Windows Virtual Desktop, built on Azure, has provided the ability to provision and scale virtual desktops and apps faster than was previously possible.

"Because scalability is so important, we introduced a feature called MSIX App Attach. The MSIX App Attach Preview will optimize people's experiences by untangling the OS image that organizations deploy in the cloud from the apps that people need to access," informed Microsoft.

With Microsoft PowerToys (0.18), app developers can customise the Windows 10 shell for personal workflows.

"Today's updates add two new utilities: Keyboard Remapper and PowerToys Run. You can remap key to key and shortcut to shortcut using Keyboard Remapper," said Microsoft.