Happy new year folks! This is the first release of 2026 and focused on publishing some needed windows-bindgen updates so that Windows can ingest and update its Rust support internally.

This release only updates the windows-bindgen crate (0.66.0) while other crates in the Windows family remain unchanged at this time.

What's Changed

• Promote remaining error types to windows-result by @kennykerr in https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/3783
• Fix for new warnings by @kennykerr in https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/3789
• Bump actions/setup-node from 5 to 6 by @dependabot[bot] in https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/3790
• Add comment for combase workaround handling by @kennykerr in https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/3794
• Add --sys-fn-ptrs for windows-sys fn ptr types by @uint-nate in https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/3782
• Use heuristic to determine handle types by @kennykerr in https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/3793
• Fix for Nightly warnings about using rotate_left by @kennykerr in https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/3800
• Fix nested type indexing in the windows-metadata reader by @kennykerr in https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/3799
• Bump actions/upload-artifact from 4 to 5 by @dependabot[bot] in https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/3803
• Remove service thread sample by @kennykerr in https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/3804
• Remove Display trait implementation for HSTRING and BSTR by @kennykerr in https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/3812
• Remove mostly-unused hint by @kennykerr in https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/3811
• Bump js-yaml from 4.1.0 to 4.1.1 in /web/features by @dependabot[bot] in https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/3817
• Simplify yml generation by @kennykerr in https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/3820
• Bump actions/checkout from 4 to 6 by @dependabot[bot] in https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/3819
• Add least privilege permissions to GitHub Actions workflows by @Copilot in https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/3826
• Add option to generate extern declarations rather than link macros by @kennykerr in https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/3828
• Bump actions/cache from 4 to 5 by @dependabot[bot] in https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/3831
• Temporarily pin clippy tests to nightly-2025-12-11 to avoid ICE by @riverar in https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/3835
• Bump actions/upload-artifact from 5 to 6 by @dependabot[bot] in https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/3833
• Bump node-forge from 1.3.1 to 1.3.3 in /web/features by @dependabot[bot] in https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/3842
• Bump qs and express in /web/features by @dependabot[bot] in https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/3843
• Bump qs and body-parser in /web/features by @dependabot[bot] in https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/3844
• Encourage using raw strings in registry docs by @spenserblack in https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/3847
• Revert "Temporarily pin clippy tests to nightly-2025-12-11 to avoid ICE" by @kennykerr in https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/3850
• Release 72 by @kennykerr in https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/3849

New Contributors

• @uint-nate made their first contribution in https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/3782
• @spenserblack made their first contribution in https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/3847

Full Changelog: https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/compare/71...72