Windows 10 Creators Update and Creators Update SDK are Released

This is a big day! Today we opened access to download the Windows 10 Creators Update and, along with it, the Creators Update SDK. And today is a great day for all Windows developers to get the SDK and start building amazing apps that take advantage of new platform capabilities to deliver experiences that you and your users will love.

We are working hard to innovate in Windows and to bring the power of those innovations to Windows developers and users. We released Windows 10 Anniversary Update just eight months ago, and we’ve already seen that over 80% of Windows 10 PCs are running Anniversary Update (version 1607) or later.

With today’s release of Windows 10 Creators Update, we expect users to once again move rapidly to the latest and best version of Windows. For developers, this is the time to get ready for the next wave.

What’s New in the Creators Update

Here are just a few of the new and powerful capabilities in the Creators Update:

• Enhancements to the visual layer (effects, animations and transitions) and elevation of many effects to the XAML layer with improved controls that make the enhancements easy to bring to apps
• Improvements to ink, including ink analysis and improved recognition, and an ink toolbar with new effects (tilt pencil) and tools (protractor for drawing curves and circles)
• More powerful and flexible APIs for the Surface Dial
• Significant Bluetooth improvements with Bluetooth LE GATT Server, peripheral mode for easier discovery of Windows Devices, and support for loosely coupled Bluetooth devices (those low energy devices that do not have to be explicitly paired)
• Better user engagement via notifications that can now be grouped by app, bind to data and contain in-line controls such as progress bars
• Improvements to the Desktop Bridge to make it easier than ever to bring Win32 apps to Windows 10 and the Windows Store
• The ability to have seamless cross-device experiences with Project Rome and the recently released Android SDK for Project Rome
• More targeted and effective user acquisition via Facebook app install ads with the Windows SDK for Facebook
• Background execution enhancements that enable tasks to do more with increased memory and time
• Enhanced security for apps with the ability to integrate Windows Hello
• Richer app analytics via an updated Dev Portal that enables management of multiple apps and enhanced reporting
• Faster app downloads and updates with the ability to componentize app packages and do streaming installs
• Increased efficiency and flexibility with the new ability in Visual Studio 2017 to run two different SDK versions side by side on the same machine
• Significant improvements to the Windows Console and the Windows Subsystem for Linux enabling many of the most used Linux frameworks, tools and services
• The ability for game developers to reach new audiences by publishing UWP games on the Xbox via the Xbox Live Creators Program
• Amazing 3D experiences on HoloLens and new mixed reality headsets via the Windows Mixed Reality Platform

You can find a more complete list here along with the latest developer documentation.

We’ll be taking a close look at all of these (and a lot more) at Microsoft Build 2017, including some of the things we’ve got planned for the future.

I hope to see you there!

Get Started Now

To get started, please check out Clint Rutkas’ post for the details on how to get the latest version of Visual Studio and the SDK. And take a look at Daniel Jacobson’s blog post to see some of the improvements for UWP developers in Visual Studio 2017.

— Kevin