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August 31, 2021

WebView2 Windows App SDK, WinUI2, Runtime, and CDP Helper Updates

We’ve been thrilled by the positive feedback, questions, and level of engagement from the developer community since the initial release of WebView2. Since then, we have released 7 updated SDKs with new features and bug fixes driven by your feedback. You can catch up on what’s new in our talk from Microsoft Ignite:

Today, we’re excited to share four new updates on WebView2:

  1. Windows App SDK – WebView2 Public Preview
  2. WebView2 on WinUI2 (UWP) Public Preview
  3. Deployment of WebView2 Runtime
  4. Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP) Helper

Windows App SDK (Public Preview): WebView2 is now available in the Windows App SDK. Please visit the Windows App SDK website to learn more about how to get started building Windows applications.

WebView2 on WinUI2 [UWP Support] (Public Preview): We’ve heard feedback from several customers about support for WebView2 in their existing WinUI2 based UWP apps and have subsequently worked with the WinUI team to backport our WebView2 control into WinUI2. This will be the way forward for UWP apps running on desktop to adopt WebView2. We are excited to hear your feedback and aim to GA this version of our control in the first half of 2022. Please view our github post for more info!

WebView2 Runtime Deployment: We have been working to increase the availability of the WebView2 Runtime on Windows machines. We are happy to announce two updates on this effort. First, the WebView2 Runtime will be inbox in Windows 11 machines. Second, we’re seeing many applications, including Microsoft Office, starting to deploy the WebView2 Runtime with their applications. To date, the WebView2 Runtime has been installed on over 200 million Windows devices! The increased ubiquity of the WebView2 Runtime will make it easier to deploy WebView2 applications in the preferred Evergreen distribution mode.

WebView2 CDP Helper (Preview): We have released the WebView2 CDP Extension to make it easier for .NET developers to utilize CDP APIs in their WebView2 applications. CDP, Chrome DevTools Protocol, is a set of Chromium Open Source APIs traditionally used to instrument, inspect, debug, and profile chromium based browsers. WebView2 developers can take advantage of these APIs to add increased functionality beyond the current scope of available WebView2 APIs. Common use cases of CDP have been: cookie management (now incorporated into WebView2), enhanced emulation, screenshots, and much more! Checkout a recently released CDP tutorial for a step by step guide on how to use the WebView2 CDP Extension. Let us know in our feedback repo how you are using CDP to add extra functionality to your applications!

To stay up to date with the latest releases and updates subscribe to the WebView2 Announcements repo or checkout our release notes. If you have any questions, feature requests, or notice any bugs – let us know in the WebView2 feedback repo.