winappCli

WinApp CLI

Why? • Get Started • Installation • Usage • Docs • Feedback

The Windows App Development CLI (WinApp CLI) is a single command-line interface for creating, running, debugging, testing, and packaging Windows apps. It manages Windows SDKs, app identity, manifests, certificates, and build tools for WinUI and any other app framework.

Whether you’re building with WinUI, .NET/Win32, CMake, Electron, or Rust, this CLI gives you access to:

• WinUI from the terminal - Create apps from official templates with winapp new and launch them with winapp run
• Modern Windows APIs - Windows App SDK and Windows SDK with automatic setup and code generation
• Package Identity - Debug and test by adding package identity without full packaging in a snap
• MSIX Packaging - App packaging with signing and Store readiness
• UI automation and agent tooling - Inspect and drive running apps with winapp ui, and ground AI coding agents with find-ui and find-api
• Developer Tools - Manifests, certificates, assets, and build integration

Full documentation is published on Microsoft Learn: Windows App Development CLI.

Perfect for:

• WinUI developers who want to create, run, test, and package apps from the terminal, VS Code, or an AI coding agent
• Cross-platform developers using frameworks like Qt or Electron wanting native Windows features or targeting Windows
• Developers who love their current tools and want to build Windows apps from VS Code, or any other editor
• Developers crafting CI/CD pipelines to automate building apps for Windows

🤔 Why?

Many Windows APIs require your app to have package identity, enabling you to leverage some of the OS components Windows offers, that you wouldn’t otherwise have access to. With identity, your app gains access to user-first features like notifications, OS integration, and on-device AI.

Our goal is to support developers wherever they are, with the tools and frameworks they already use. Based on feedback from developers shipping cross-platform apps on Windows, we built this CLI to streamline integrating with the Windows developer platform - handling SDK setup, header generation, manifests, certificates, and packaging in just a few commands:

Without WinApp CLI, setting up a project involves 12 manual steps—downloading SDKs, generating headers, creating manifests, and more. With the CLI, it's just 4 commands.

A few examples of what package identity and MSIX packaging unlock:

• Interactive native notifications and notification management
• Integration with Windows Explorer, Taskbar, Share sheet, and other shell surfaces
• Protocol handlers (yourapp:// URIs)
• Web-to-app linking (yoursite.com opens your app)
• On-device AI (Local LLM, Text and Image AI APIs)
• Custom CLI commands via AppExecutionAlias
• Controlled access to camera, microphone, location, and other devices (with user consent)
• Background tasks (run when app is closed)
• File type associations (open .xyz files with your app)
• Startup tasks (launch at Windows login)
• App services (expose APIs to other apps)
• Clean install/uninstall & auto-updates

✏️ Get started

Check out our getting started guides for step by step instructions of how to setup your environment, generate manifests, assets, and certificate, how to debug APIs that require package identity, and how to MSIX package your app.

Additional guides:

• Packaging an EXE/CLI: step by step guide of packaging an existing exe/cli as MSIX
• Sparse packaging: give an unpackaged app package identity with an identity-only MSIX and external content
• Shell completion: tab completion for commands, options, and values in PowerShell, bash, zsh, and fish
• .NET file-based apps: run a single .cs file with package identity, no project file or manifest required
• Electron JS/TypeScript bindings (npm only): opt into auto-generated WinRT bindings via winapp init --add-js-bindings. See task-focused guides:
  • File picker — open native Windows file/folder pickers from the renderer
  • Toast notifications — show Windows toasts with actions
  • Phi Silica (on-device LLM) — local text generation via Windows AI
  • WinML inference — run ONNX models with the Windows ML runtime

📦 Installation

WinGet

The easiest way to use the CLI is via WinGet (Windows Package Manager). In Terminal, run:

winget install Microsoft.winappcli --source winget

Or, if you prefer a PowerShell terminal, you can use the WinGet PowerShell cmdlet (from the Microsoft.WinGet.Client module):

Install-WinGetPackage Microsoft.winappcli

NPM

You can install the CLI for Electron projects via NPM:

npm install @microsoft/winappcli --save-dev

GitHub Actions / Azure DevOps

For CI/CD pipelines on GitHub Actions or Azure DevOps, use the setup-WinAppCli action to automatically install the CLI on your runners/agents.

Download Release Manually

Download the latest build from GitHub Releases

Install from latest build (main branch)

Download the latest CI build artifacts directly (no GitHub login required):

Artifact	Description
CLI Binaries	Native CLI executables (win-x64, win-arm64)
npm Package	@microsoft/winappcli .tgz package
MSIX Packages	MSIX installer bundle (self-signed)
NuGet Packages	NuGet .nupkg packages

Download links not working?

The direct links above are provided by nightly.link, a third-party service. If they stop working, you can download the same artifacts from GitHub Actions directly:

1. Go to the Build and Package workflow runs (filtered to successful builds on main)
2. Click the most recent workflow run
3. Scroll down to the Artifacts section and download what you need

Note: Downloading artifacts from GitHub Actions requires you to be signed in to GitHub.

Try a pull request build

Open the PR’s Build and Package run and download cli-binaries, npm-package, msix-packages, or nuget-packages from Artifacts. The build-artifacts job summary also links to each download.

Packages appear before validation finishes. They are experimental builds, not evidence that tests passed. Wait for build-and-package to succeed if you need a fully validated build. If a download is not available yet, check the build-artifacts job for progress or errors. A new commit cancels older runs of the same PR.

📋 Usage

Once installed (see Installation above), verify the installation by calling the CLI:

winapp --help

or if using Electron/Node.js

npx winapp --help

Commands Overview

Setup Commands:

• new - Create a new WinUI app from an official Windows App SDK template
• init - Initialize project with Windows SDK and App SDK
• restore - Restore packages and dependencies
• update - Update packages and dependencies to latest versions

App Identity & Debugging:

• perf - Record and query WinUI operation trees, layout/scrolling timings, and managed GC suspension context
• run - Run app as a packaged application for debugging (loose layout registration)
• create-debug-identity - Add sparse package identity to an existing exe
• embed-identity - Connect an exe to its sparse identity package by embedding the <msix> element
• unregister - Remove sideloaded dev packages registered by run or create-debug-identity
• manifest - Generate and manage AppxManifest.xml files

See also: Debugging Guide — choosing between winapp run and create-debug-identity, IDE setup, and debugging scenarios.

Packaging, Certificates & Signing:

• pack - Create MSIX packages from a project or prepared directories
• cert - Generate and install development certificates
• sign - Sign MSIX packages and executables
• az-sign - Sign with Azure Trusted Signing (cloud-managed identity, no local PFX)
• create-external-catalog - Generate CodeIntegrityExternal.cat for TrustedLaunch sparse packages

See also: Security guidance — what development certificates and Developer Mode change on your machine, safe handling of devcert.pfx, and production signing.

Development Tools:

• tool - Access Windows SDK tools
• store - Run Microsoft Store Developer CLI commands
• get-winapp-path - Get paths to installed SDK components
• config - Show or change your per-user winapp settings
• complete - Tab completion for PowerShell, bash, zsh, and fish

UI Automation & Sandbox:

• ui - Inspect and interact with running app UIs through UI Automation (screenshots, element trees, clicks, and text input). See the UI Automation guide
• target - Run commands, copy files, and capture the desktop inside Windows Sandbox. See Windows Sandbox execution
• devtools - Inspect, comment on and live-edit a running WinUI app (guide)

Discovery (agent-first — built for AI coding agents to ground generated code in real metadata and real samples, and usable by hand):

• find-api - Search and inspect the Windows/WinRT API surface (types, members, enums, namespaces) a project references
• find-ui - Search WinUI controls & samples (WinUI 3 Gallery + Windows Community Toolkit, including its helpers, converters, and behaviors; Reactor is opt-in via --source reactor) for a working code example

Node.js/Electron Specific:

• node create-addon - Generate native C# or C++ addons
• node generate-bindings - Generate JavaScript/TypeScript bindings for WinRT APIs
• node add-electron-debug-identity - Add identity to Electron processes
• node clear-electron-debug-identity - Remove identity from Electron processes

The full CLI usage can be found here: Documentation Use WinApp CLI from JavaScript or TypeScript: NPM programmatic guide

🧾 Samples

This repository includes samples demonstrating how to use the CLI with various frameworks:

Sample	Description
C++ App	Native C++ Win32 application with CMake
C++ WinUI App	Packaged C++/WinRT WinUI 3 app (Visual Studio .vcxproj, XAML) launched via winapp run <vcxproj>
.NET Console	.NET console application
.NET File-Based App	Single .cs file app with package identity, run via winapp run app.cs — no project or manifest
WPF App	WPF desktop application
WinUI App	Packaged WinUI 3 app registered and launched via winapp run <csproj>
WinUI Unpackaged App	Unpackaged WinUI 3 app launched via winapp run <csproj>
WinUI Solution	Multi-project .sln (app + test project) demonstrating winapp run solution-mode auto-selection
C++ WinUI App	WinUI 3 window built in C++ with CMake, without XAML or MSBuild
.NET MAUI App	.NET MAUI Windows project packaged and signed with winapp
Electron	Electron Forge app with appxmanifest, assets, native C++ addon, and C# addon
Electron WinML	Electron app using Windows ML for image classification
Node.js WinUI 3	Native WinUI 3 controls created directly from JavaScript
Rust App	Rust application using Windows APIs
Tauri App	Tauri cross-platform app with Rust backend
Flutter App	Flutter desktop app with package identity and Windows App SDK
Sparse App	WPF app with production sparse packaging (identity-only MSIX) and an Inno Setup installer

🧩 VS Code Extension

The WinApp VS Code Extension brings WinApp CLI into Visual Studio Code. It can initialize projects, debug with package identity, package, sign, and more without leaving the editor. Press F5 to launch your app with identity and automatically attach a debugger.

Install it from the Visual Studio Marketplace. Check out the repo for the WinApp VS Code Extension at microsoft/WinAppVSCE.

🤖 Using with AI Coding Agents

This repo ships two plugins, each published to the GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, and Codex marketplaces on every release:

• winappcli (plugins/winapp/): an agent plus skills for winapp commands, workflows, and troubleshooting. It conforms to the Agent Plugins 1.0 specification.
• winui (plugins/winui/): skills for building, packaging, and testing WinUI 3 apps.

GitHub Copilot CLI (global — works across all projects)

copilot plugin marketplace add microsoft/WinAppCli
copilot plugin install winappcli@winappcli
copilot plugin install winui@winappcli

Claude Code

claude plugin marketplace add microsoft/WinAppCli
claude plugin install winappcli@winappcli
claude plugin install winui@winappcli

Codex

codex plugin marketplace add microsoft/WinAppCli
codex plugin add winappcli@winappcli
codex plugin add winui@winappcli

🔧 Feedback and Support

File an issue, feature request or bug: please ensure that you are not filing a duplicate issue

Need help or have questions about the Windows App Development CLI? Visit our Support Guide for information about our issue templates and triage process.

Contributing

This project welcomes contributions and suggestions. Most contributions require you to agree to a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) declaring that you have the right to, and actually do, grant us the rights to use your contribution. For details, visit Contributor License Agreements.

When you submit a pull request, a CLA bot will automatically determine whether you need to provide a CLA and decorate the PR appropriately (e.g., status check, comment). Simply follow the instructions provided by the bot. You will only need to do this once across all repos using our CLA.

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact [email protected] with any additional questions or comments.

To build the CLI:

# Build the CLI and package for npm, NuGet, and MSIX from the repo root
.\scripts\build-cli.ps1

The binaries and packages will be placed in the artifacts folder. The build also builds and stages the matching DevTools engines beside each winapp.exe. Install the Visual Studio C++ x64/x86 and ARM64 build tools before a full build. Npm packaging requires PowerShell 7.3 or newer for tarball verification. From src\winapp-npm, npm run build-x64 or npm run build-arm64 builds only that architecture and its engines, without running tests.

Reviewing your changes before pushing

Developer-facing AI skills live under .github/skills/. Before pushing a PR, you can ask Copilot CLI (or any agent that reads skill files) to “review my PR” — the pr-review skill fans out parallel sub-agents covering security, correctness and tests, CLI UX, alternative solutions, necessity and simplicity, shipping surfaces (docs/samples/packaging), and a different-model cross-check. It then builds and runs the CLI to validate the critical findings, and prints a short list to stdout.

Trademarks

This project may contain trademarks or logos for projects, products, or services. Authorized use of Microsoft trademarks or logos is subject to and must follow Microsoft’s Trademark & Brand Guidelines. Use of Microsoft trademarks or logos in modified versions of this project must not cause confusion or imply Microsoft sponsorship. Any use of third-party trademarks or logos are subject to those third-party’s policies.