ICYMI – Top Announcements from Microsoft Build 2020

It has been one month since the first-ever, completely virtual Microsoft Build, where we unveiled new tools and updates to make developing for all 1 billion Windows 10 devices easier. It’s an exciting time for Windows, and if you missed the event or just want to relive the announcements, here are the top pieces of Windows news!

Project Reunion

Project Reunion is breaking down the barrier between Win32 and Universal Windows Platform (UWP) APIs. It starts with WinUI 3 Preview 1 and WebView2.

WinUI makes it easy to build modern, seamless UIs for all Windows apps across both Win32 and UWP. It’s powered by a highly optimized C++ core and will never force you to update. Read more about the what, why and how of WinUI.

#DYK WinUI 3 Preview 1 now enables #WinUI usage for #UWP app developers AND desktop (Win32) apps? #MSBuild

— Windows Developer (@windowsdev) May 20, 2020

The WebView2 control enables you to embed web technologies (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) in different parts of your native application, or build the entire native application within a single WebView with Microsoft Edge (Chromium) as the rendering engine. The Preview is meant for early prototyping and to gather feedback to help to shape the API. Check out everything new from Microsoft Edge.

It's finally time for the first #MSBuild since we launched the new Microsoft Edge!

This year at #MSBuild we're excited announce new innovations like Collections x @Pinterest collaboration, automatic profile switching, new WebView2 preview SDKs and much more.

— Microsoft Edge Dev (@MSEdgeDev) May 19, 2020

Windows Terminal 1.0

Working with the dev community since Windows Terminal was announced during Build 2019, 1.0 is here. It’s full of features — including tabs and panes and GPU Accelerated Rendering — that improve your workflow and allow you to add customization options. See for yourself!

Windows Terminal 1.0 has been released!! A huge thank you to everyone who has helped contribute! https://t.co/VpnwIDHCxM

— Kayla Cinnamon (@cinnamon_msft) May 19, 2020

Windows Subsystem for Linux Updates (WSL)

For WSL, we announced two updates for this month and gave a sneak peek at the current roadmap. For now, we wanted WSL to run all Linux apps and tools — faster. WSL 2, available through the Windows 10 May 2020 update, delivers full system call compatibility with a real Linux kernel and is 3-6x faster compared to earlier versions of WSL.

Following a successful preview period, Docker Desktop for Windows will now default to run atop WSL 2 when installed on the Windows 10 May 2020 update, which will bring Docker Desktop to Windows Home users as well. Containers will boot up faster and consume fewer resources on the host machine.

Learn more about the full WSL roadmap.

Here are all the details on our WSL build announces for this year! Learn more about Linux GUI apps coming to WSL, GPU compute, and simplified command line installs! https://t.co/j50ZPQr1H5

— Craig Loewen (@craigaloewen) May 19, 2020

Microsoft PowerToys (0.18)

We had three big goals for the 0.18 release cycle: PowerToys Run, Keyboard manager, and migrating to the new settings system. This is also the first time we’ll test out the auto-updating system. Get the patch.

Today we shipped #PowerToys 0.18.0 today. We added in PowerToys Run, Keyboard remapper, and as always, fixed a lot of bugs https://t.co/sEKRCKTYVC #MSBuild pic.twitter.com/PSuKziGMTy

— Clint Rutkas (@ClintRutkas) May 19, 2020