how do I find the working area of my uwp app in .net using C#

Joe Babb 60

This is a simple question but I'm having a rough time finding an answer. What I want to find is the working area of my application. I'm working in Visual Studio 2022 and have created the basic project. Searches on the internet result in many answers that don't work for uwp or .net. Answers usually show up for Windows Forms.

I wish there was a straight forward site where I could simply look up .NET classes and namespaces for UWP. If there is, please direct me to it.

Junjie Zhu - MSFT 15,056 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor

2024-04-25T02:34:17.51+00:00
Hi @Joe Babb ,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A!

To help me understand this question, I would appreciate your help to collect the following information.

What is the "working area of my uwp app"? Is the Rect value of the UWP app?

"how do I find the working area of my uwp app in .net using C#" Do you want to get this value in the UWP project, or in other projects?

Thank you.
Joe Babb 60 Reputation points

2024-04-25T11:49:15.12+00:00

Hi @Junjie Zhu

I want to rebuild an old program I had written in Win32 long ago that would allow me to plot on the screen an audio waveform. I would get the area of the window in the form or a Rect and that would allow me to scale things to plot. I specified .NET and C# because I could find ways of getting the area if my program was a Windows Forms but that would not work in my UWP program. If there is an answer I would like one.

But... After fiddling with UWP and finding that it has been deprecated, I think I am going to look into building my program in .NET Maui. I'm running into other problems there, but that will be a separate question.
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Peter Smith 581 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2024-04-26T18:03:54.27+00:00
As a person who's built C# widgets to display dynamic XY graphs of data:

Make a XAML object for the space for your graph. I use the Canvas object in general. Note that this has nothing to do with a canvas like what JavaScript does -- it's just a rectangle that doesn't do any special layout / clipping of the children

After your thing is Loaded (add a this.Loaded += ___ in your constructor), use the .ActualWidth and .ActualHeight of the XAML object.

This is different from the Accepted answer because it tells you exactly how big your graph has to be. The size of the Window will include all of the rest of your UX, which is probably not what you want.

And FYI: UWP is "Deprecated" but will continue to be supported essentially forever.
Castorix31 81,746 Reputation points

2024-04-27T09:04:05.07+00:00

But... After fiddling with UWP and finding that it has been deprecated, I think I am going to look into building my program in .NET Maui. I'm running into other problems there, but that will be a separate question.

If the program was "written in Win32", you can use WinUI 3, which are Win32 desktop apps

(I rewrote many C#/Winforms or C++/Win32 programs into WinUI 3 and the code is nearly the same, apart XAML controls)
Joe Babb 60 Reputation points

2024-04-27T12:24:47.1166667+00:00

Thank you both @Castorix31 and @Peter Smith . Both comments are helpful. I am new to the concept of using XAML to instantiate things and have found some good information at Microsoft but I am having a bit of difficulty getting the relationships in my head. Is there possibly a good book that focuses on the relations of XAML to code behind? Or is it something I just have to "play with" ( I hate doing that). I like to have a good understanding of what I'm doing.
Joe Babb 60 Reputation points

2024-04-28T12:23:11.0666667+00:00

I removed that I accepted the answer because it did not work. My UWP program did not recognize the Window.Current.Bounds. So I'm still trying to find an answer.

Accepted answer

Junjie Zhu - MSFT 15,056 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor

2024-04-26T06:35:13.9033333+00:00
Hi @Joe Babb ,

It is recommende to use Window.Bounds Property, it gets a Rect value that contains the origin, height, and width of the client area of the window, in device-independent pixels (DIPs).

Rect rect = Window.Current.Bounds;

Thank you.

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Joe Babb 60 Reputation points

2024-04-28T16:21:03.9766667+00:00

I accept this answer even though it did not work for me. But after studying alternatives, I've decided to bite the .NET MAUI bullet and learn to use it and didn't want anyone to waste time trying to answer the first question. Thanks everyone for the attempts at help. I really appreciate your time.
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how do I find the working area of my uwp app in .net using C#

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