See more information on our release blog here

What's Changed

This release adds support for Native AOT and UWP for .NET 9. As well as improvements to SwitchPresenter and adds SwitchConverter among other APIs, see the blog for a breakdown. Individual changes since 8.1 below.

Important Changes

Dependencies/TFM

The Toolkit's dependencies have been updated to WindowsAppSDK 1.6 and Uno Platform 5.5 versions to take in fixes and updates we needed to support .NET 8 and address other issues within the Toolkit. As usual, the Toolkit should be forward compatible with minor versions of these libraries and frameworks.

We've also updated our Win2D dependency in this PR which now means the base TFM required for building is again 19041 and should work with the default WinUI templates. We know this caused a lot of confusion for folks with the 8.1 release.

❗ Note: We've also updated to XAML Behaviors 3.0 which unifies the namespaces for behaviors, you'll need to apply that alignment when upgrading to change Microsoft.Xaml.Interactions.Core to Microsoft.Xaml.Interactivity.

Highlights

• Updated to WinAppSdk 1.6, fixed AoT annotations by @Arlodotexe in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/457
• Refactor MultiTarget, fix consuming uwp from net9.0-windows by @Arlodotexe in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/591
• SwitchPresenter 2.0 and the new SwitchConverter 🦙❤️ by @michael-hawker in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/550
• Enable 'AcrylicBrush' in WinUI 3 again by @Sergio0694 in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/488
• Improvements to DispatcherQueueTimer.Debounce extension by @michael-hawker in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/569

Samples/Docs

• Erinwoo/media samples by @michael-hawker in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/654
• Updated readme by @niels9001 in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/652
• Fixed AoT data binding in IncrementalLoadingCollectionSample by @Arlodotexe in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/531
• Fixes #513 - AdvancedCollectionView not working with NativeAoT by @michael-hawker in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/535
• Fix invalid XML comment in SettingsExpander by @michael-hawker in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/646
• chore: update typos in class properties summary by @ajpinedam in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/471
• Fixed a small typo by @HotCakeX in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/586
• Fixed a typo by @HotCakeX in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/588

Bug Fixes

• Update _toolTip even if toolTipText isn't available by @dotMorten in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/479
• Fix: DockPanel measure fix by @Poker-sang in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/618
• Hook up TokenizingTextBox AutoSuggestBoxStyle by @miksalmon in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/657
• Fix issue with Windows 11 ListViewStyle by @TopperDEL in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/566
• Fix: StaggeredLayout division bug by @Poker-sang in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/574
• Fix: prevent StaggeredLayout floating point errors by @Poker-sang in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/573
• Fix analyzer warnings for CsWinRTAotWarningLevel 2 by @Arlodotexe in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/507
• Updated Win2d, fixed AttachedCardShadow under NativeAoT by @Arlodotexe in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/526
• Fix: ColorPicker Binding failed by @Poker-sang in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/579

Infrastructure

• Update Directory.Build.props to Version 8.2 by @michael-hawker in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/483
• Fixed Codespace container build failure by @Arlodotexe in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/458
• Update Microsoft.WindowsAppSDK to 1.6-preview2 by @Arlodotexe in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/492
• Update Microsoft.WindowsAppSdk to 1.6 stable by @Arlodotexe in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/503
• Run CI when merging to dev/* branches by @Arlodotexe in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/504
• Run CI when pushing to dev/* branches by @Arlodotexe in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/505
• Merge patch 8.1.240916 into main by @Arlodotexe in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/508
• Fixed failed NuGet validation due to webview2 reference by @michael-hawker in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/521
• Update Microsoft.Graphics.Win2D package reference to version 1.3.0, downgrade TFM back to 19041 by @Arlodotexe in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/540
• Update config.yml by @Arlodotexe in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/539
• Update tooling pointer, bump global.json to 8.0.403 by @Arlodotexe in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/541
• Specify directory for dotnet to install to and execute from. by @Arlodotexe in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/567
• Update tooling pointer by @michael-hawker in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/572
• Fix solution generation via default .bat by @Arlodotexe in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/580
• Enable .NET 8 for uwp MultiTarget, upgrade packages by @Arlodotexe in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/584
• Fixed an issue where ExcludeMultiTargets wasn't working as expected by @Arlodotexe in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/592
• Bump Win2D dependencies by @Sergio0694 in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/594
• Bump tooling pointer by @Sergio0694 in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/595
• Fix sudden CI errors by @Arlodotexe in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/609
• Update XamlBehaviors to 3.0.0 by @Sergio0694 in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/613
• Update WinUI 2 to 2.8.7 stable by @Sergio0694 in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/620
• Fixes solution generation issues by updating slngen by @Arlodotexe in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/638
• Update tooling with latest fixes and improvements by @Arlodotexe in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/645
• Align RootNamespace across tests to remove "Experiment" suffix by @Arlodotexe in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/659

New Contributors

• @Sergio0694 made their first contribution in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/488
• @dotMorten made their first contribution in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/479
• @ajpinedam made their first contribution in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/471
• @TopperDEL made their first contribution in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/566
• @HotCakeX made their first contribution in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/586
• @miksalmon made their first contribution in https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/pull/657

Any known AOT issues are tracked here, please open new issues for any not on that list if you discover them, thank you.

Full Changelog: https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows/compare/v8.1.240916...v8.2.250402