Edit

Share via

Overview of Win2D

  • Article

Win2D is an easy-to-use Windows Runtime (WinRT) API for immediate-mode 2D graphics rendering with GPU acceleration. It's ideal for creating simple games, displays such as charts, and other simple 2D graphics.

You can use Win2D in your WinUI 3 (Windows App SDK) apps or Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps, using either C#, C++, or VB. Win2D utilizes the power of Direct2D, and it integrates seamlessly with XAML on both WinUI 3 (Windows App SDK) and UWP.

Important

Win2D for WinUI 3 (Windows App SDK) is a work-in-progress, and some features aren't supported. This documentation refers to both the WinUI 3 and UWP versions, which mostly share the same API surface and functionality. Whenever there's any relevant differences between the two, we'll call it out in the documentation. But otherwise, the info being presented applies to both platforms in the same way.

Get started

Win2D is available as a NuGet package, or as source code (for the source code, see the Win2D repo on GitHub).

Reference the Win2D NuGet package

In a WinUI 3 or UWP project in Visual Studio, click Tools > NuGet Package Manager > Manage NuGet Packages for Solution... > Browse. Make sure that Include prerelease is unchecked, and type or paste into the search box:

Select the correct item in search results, check your project, and click Install to install the package into that project. Accept the license agreement.

Important

If you see any error messages, then try updating the version of the Windows App SDK NuGet package that you're referencing (if appropriate). Or try going into project properties, and setting Target OS version to the latest version.

Next steps

Next, to learn about creating a simple app, try out the Win2D "Hello, World!" quickstart, or the Build a simple Win2D app tutorial. You can also consult the features list to discover all the things Win2D can do. To learn more about advanced topics, you can refer to the collection of articles included in the documentation here as well.

Reference

The Win2D APIs.