Hey WinUI developers! WinUI Gallery 2.7 is here and it’s packed with fresh updates. If you’re new around here, WinUI Gallery is the go-to app for exploring WinUI controls, samples, design guidance, and handy tools — all in one place. This release brings a mix of brand-new features, upgraded samples, and plenty of community-driven improvements. Let’s dive in:

Sample history & favorites

No more losing track of what you were exploring! The home screen now has history and favorites tabs:

• Mark samples as favorites and find them under the Favorites tab.
• Recently opened samples show up in History so you can quickly jump back in.

Thanks to @Zakariathr22 for #1875

New & updated samples

TitleBar

Updated to use the new TitleBar control, so you can create polished window chrome with just a few lines of code.

ThemeShadow

A brand-new sample showing off composition-based shadows for that extra bit of depth and flair.

StoragePicker (Windows App SDK 1.8)

We’ve moved the Gallery to Windows App SDK 1.8, which introduces the new StoragePicker APIs. These bring improvements like full-admin mode support. The related samples have been refreshed to match the new APIs.

Thanks @Zakariathr22 for #2044

Fresh built-in styles

We’ve added a couple of new typography and button styles:

• BodyLargeTextBlockStyle & BodyLargeStrongTextBlockStyle for TextBlocks
• SubtleButtonStyle for Buttons

Other noticeable changes

We’ve closed over 100 PRs, improving our code base, maintainability, accessibility, and fixing lots of bugs. Some highlights include:

• Symbol enums now show on the Iconography page – thanks @weitzhandler
• Smoother scrolling and UX on the Colors and Iconography pages
• Upgraded to Windows App SDK 1.8
• Using new WinUI TitleBar in the Gallery, for an improved UX and easier maintenance
• Fixed a bunch of accessibility issues (from text scaling to screen reader improvements)
• Refined styling and spacing across multiple pages for a cleaner look
• Fixed drag & drop issues between ListViews – thanks @jpcassano
• Lots of typo and doc fixes, code cleanup, accessibility bugfixes and general polish from many contributors – thanks @Jay-o-Way, @AndrewKeepCoding, @weitzhandler, @Zakariathr22, @manabu-nakamura, @MGGSK, @0x5bfa, @mrlacey, @ghost1372, @jpcassano, @rashmi-thakurr, @sabareesanms

All in all, WinUI Gallery 2.7 is packed with polish, new samples, and community love! Grab it from the Microsoft Store or check out the GitHub repo if you want to contribute.

Happy coding! 💻✨