Microsoft has open sourced XAML Studio under the .NET Foundation, shifting the long-dormant XAML prototyping tool to community governance to ensure long-term sustainability and stronger WinUI 3 support.
Microsoft has open sourced XAML Studio, a developer tool designed for rapid prototyping of UWP XAML interfaces before code is integrated into Visual Studio. The project has been placed under the .NET Foundation as a seed project, marking a transition to community-led stewardship and long-term sustainability.
Despite the move to open source, XAML Studio will continue to ship as a Microsoft Store app, ensuring continuity for existing users. Development is active on XAML Studio v2, which may be released later in 2026. While no major new tooling features are planned, maintainers are focusing on back-end improvements, refactoring, and stabilisation, as outlined in the public roadmap.
XAML Studio v2 includes several experimental features, particularly aimed at WinUI 3 support, many of which are still early in their development cycle and require architectural changes.
“Open sourcing is a feature! This was a lot of work to get to this point, but we’re super excited to continue this journey with the community of passionate WinUI developers out there,” wrote Michael Hawker, creator of XAML Studio and senior software engineer at Microsoft.
Hawker added, “XAML Studio v2 has a lot of cool features, but many of them are still experimental and early in their development cycle. We hope to continue improving these experiences and stabilizing the code, especially with some still needed larger changes needed to fully support some of the new experiences as well as WinUI 3.”
Originally created in 2017 as a hackathon prototype called XamlPad+, XAML Studio last saw a public release in 2019. Earlier open-source efforts began in 2020 with individual components, before the full platform was opened to the community.
By moving XAML Studio into open governance, Microsoft is repositioning the tool as a shared infrastructure asset for the Windows UI developer ecosystem.
