- Microsoft is working to make WinUI 3 faster
- This is the contemporary framework for the operating system user interface.
- With WinUI 3 being used more widely in Windows 11 and tweaked for better performance, it’s another key way the operating system could speed up.
We’ve learned more about Microsoft’s efforts to make Windows 11 faster and discovered another front the company is working on to ensure the operating system is more performant in terms of core interface elements.
Windows Central reports that the big push for better performance, which is part of a broader campaign to fix Windows 11, involves not only transitioning Windows 11 interface elements to use WinUI 3, but also speeding up WinUI itself.
For the uninitiated, WinUI refers to the contemporary framework for the Windows user interface (UI). It is used by Microsoft for many of the core apps and elements of Windows 11, and can also be used by third-party software developers to make their own apps fit the look and feel of the operating system.
So Microsoft is employing WinUI 3 in more places within Windows 11, but it’s also making it work better, as software engineer Beth Pan makes clear in a post on GitHub, stating that: “Our mission is to make WinUI 3 the best native UI platform for Windows experiences and apps, and performance is at the center of that effort.”
Pan adds: “Making this a reality means delivering performance improvements at multiple levels, even within WinUI itself.”
The software engineer further notes: “We have focused on release time, using File Explorer and Notepad as our main benchmarks, with an emphasis on improvements that broadly benefit most applications.”
Pan then breaks down some of the performance improvements that have been achieved so far with File Explorer, including 41% and 63% fewer allocations and transient allocations, respectively, as well as 45% fewer function calls and a 25% reduction in time spent on WinUI code.
Analysis: They tell us a long-term commitment to fundamentals and quality
What does that actually mean? Well, these changes are still in an early stage of development and we don’t know what the mentioned improvements actually mean in terms of making File Explorer launch faster. There’s no “it will be x seconds faster” here (of course, launch times will naturally vary on different hardware configurations, anyway).
However, the gist is clear: a lot of optimization work is being done with the core elements of Windows 11 in this regard, and it will surely help with performance. Especially considering that this work is not done in isolation.
Remember that Microsoft also has projects brewing to improve the performance of File Explorer in several ways, and one of them is ‘Low Latency Profile’. This is a recently revealed CPU trick that could be instrumental in making many Windows 11 apps and interface elements run much more responsive.
Another encouraging theme that is evident here is that of greater collaboration within Microsoft. Pan observes in the post: “The approach here is that we do what we can from [the] side of the frame, and [obviously] Other Windows teams also investigated and [have] We have been working to improve the overall performance of the release, connecting and collaborating frequently to ensure improvements are end-to-end. “It’s a long-term commitment to fundamentals and quality.”
This all sounds very positive for the future, and as someone else comments on the GitHub post, claiming to be a former Microsoft employee, observes: “This was by far the most frustrating thing about working with you, each team seemed to do their own thing. I hope you really put in the work to fix it.”
So far, the scope of the Windows 11 revamp is laudably broad, so let’s hope that reality lives up to the promising early work we’re seeing and that Microsoft is really coming together to work more effectively between its different Windows groups.
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