API reference for Windows desktop apps

The following collections of APIs can be used to build Windows desktop apps for Windows 11 and Windows 10.

Collection	Description	APIs
Windows SDK	The Windows SDK provides the latest headers, libraries, metadata, and tools for building Windows applications. Use this SDK to build Universal Windows Platform (UWP) and Win32 applications for Windows 11 and previous Windows releases.	WinRT API reference WinUI 2 for UWP API reference Win32 API reference
Windows App SDK	The Windows App SDK provides a broad set of Windows APIs with implementations that are decoupled from the operating system (OS), and released to developers via NuGet packages. The Windows App SDK doesn't replace the Windows SDK. The Windows SDK will continue to work as is, and there are many core components of Windows that will continue to evolve via APIs that are delivered via OS and Windows SDK releases.	WinRT API reference Win32 API reference COM interop APIs for WinUI reference C# Interop APIs for WinUI reference Bootstrapper C# APIs reference
.NET	.NET is a free, cross-platform, open source developer platform for building many different types of applications, including Windows desktop apps.	.NET API reference
Schema specifications	File and XML schema specifications for Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps.	Schema reference

Important

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