Winapp, the Windows App Development CLI

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2026/01/22/announcing-winapp-the-windows-app-development-cli/

45•MaysonL•5d ago

Comments

codeulike•1h ago

Great, thats not going to get confused with "Windows App" which is the new confusing and impossible to google name for Remote Desktop

a_rahmanshah•1h ago

Or Winamp. I read it couple of times before I noticed it is not Winamp.

imathew•1h ago

Winapp, it really whips the LLMas ass

nacozarina•1h ago

baaa BAAA-aaaaa

rootnod3•14m ago

God damnit...that definitely deserves the upvote.

sgt•12m ago

@dang can't we have a feature on HN where you vote a comment into the "hall of fame" or such?

Markoff•1h ago

I just realized it now after reading your comment, I opened first comments to find out what's new about Winamp before opening the site

ivanjermakov•1h ago

Windows App is the biggest naming blunder in history. Impossible to find relevant information.

einr•17m ago

It's perfectly clear: if you need to run a Windows app on another Windows PC, you just open the Windows app store on your Windows PC to download the Windows app Windows App, a Windows app that lets you connect to and run Windows apps on other Windows PCs.

pseidemann•32m ago

How is such a product decision even possible? Genuinely curious.

pixelpoet•22m ago

Ask the marketing department that destroyed one of the most famous brands on earth, MS Office, and renamed it to "Microsoft Copilot 365 app": https://office.com

luckman212•19m ago

This is so bad it doesn't even seem humanly possible. Maybe this decision was made by Copilot itself.

cobolexpert•6m ago

Copilot wanting to name everything Copilot is a funny thought, for some reason.

copilot_king•3m ago

This isn't true. Copilot is AGI.

dist-epoch•4m ago

A long time ago everything Microsoft had it's name ending in .NET, because Internet was the cool new thing.

lloydatkinson•1h ago

I read a Reddit comment on the thread for this where they suggested this was only made because of the old "windev vs devdiv" rivalry.

dgxyz•1h ago

If their stack wasn't so fucked up it wouldn't need this wrapper.

(ex windows dev)

mhitza•1h ago

They must be either incapable of binging for matching names, or its a sneaky strategy to bury, by influence, the existing winapps project https://github.com/Fmstrat/winapps

anonymous908213•1h ago

I don't honestly think it's unreasonable to ignore third-party projects that are polluting your own namespace, so to speak.

1718627440•12m ago

Their own namespace starts with "Microsoft ...".

pjc50•42m ago

Microsoft are incapable of naming things. This is the "Xbox one series X" of desktop development.

dd_xplore•1h ago

I think this uses dockur to run the windows VM. That's also an awesome project.

ludovicianul•1h ago

It's the second time I see it on HN and read Winamp.

Markoff•1h ago

obvious mistake, same here

I wonder what would be cutoff age for readers to read it correctly, I guess under 30 read it correctly, and over 40 will many read it as Winamp

Imustaskforhelp•32m ago

> I wonder what would be cutoff age for readers to read it correctly, I guess under 30 read it correctly, and over 40 will many read it as Winamp

I am 17 and I wasn't wearing my glasses and I was really speaking winamp until I read your comment then scrolled back again to realize it was winapp

My bet is that I spend time on HN so I knew what winamp is in more detail but if say friends my age read it & say they use tiktok more, I would say that they wouldn't call it winamp but winapp

So I guess I might be one of the few exceptions but I feel like people on HN are much more likely to read it as winamp than not & age might not be thaaat big of an impact (atleast on HN)

Markoff•1h ago

Winapp, NOT Winamp!

reddalo•1h ago

At first I was like... what does Winamp have to do with apps development?

martijnvds•1h ago

Llamas are hot again.

nalekberov•1h ago

Seriously, bring Winamp back! It will really whip the Llama’s ass.

asah•1h ago

But does it whip the llama's ass ?

pseufaux•32m ago

I read though the GitHub readme but I'm still unsure what "new" this brings this brings to the table. It seems like a thin wrapper over existing tools. Since Microsoft rarely deprecates and removes anything, this feels like just another unnecessary complexity layer.

I'm not a traditional app dev on Windows though, so I'm likely missing something. For those of you who are more familiar, what about this are you excited about?

ttoinou•28m ago

I develop C++ software for Windows and couldn’t understand the point of this

pjmlp•10m ago

Nevermind, this was probably a team meeting some KPIs to show value, this is useless.

grougnax•20m ago

Once again, a useless, bug-ridden, layer of complexity by Microsoft on an already messy stack. What could possibly go wrong?

pjmlp•4m ago

I already mentioned in a few places, this is useless, probably a team having to meet some KPIs, OKRs, or whatever to show their impact value on the next evaluation cycle.

Anything related to WinUI, WinAppSDK, CsWinRT, C++/WinRT is a sea of bugs, broken tooling, and unfulfilled promises, that no one should bother with.

Easily confirmed by going into their public repositories over at Github, or community session recordings over at YouTube.

For those using .NET, keep using Windows Forms or WPF, or reach out to Avalonia and Uno.

For those using C++, the aging MFC has much better tooling as incredible as it sounds, or use instead VCL/Firemonkey (C++ Builder), Qt, wxWidgets,....

For anything else, whatever bindings are available on top of plain Win32.

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Winapp, the Windows App Development CLI

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