Microsoft has introduced an open-source UWP Community Toolkit that enables the developer community to collaborate and contribute new capabilities on top of the new Windows Software Developer Kit (SDK) for Windows 10. The project was announced on the official Microsoft blog for developers earlier today.

The toolkit was designed to allow simplified app development and includes helper functions, custom controls, and app services that simplify or demonstrate common developer tasks. It can be used to build UWP apps for any Windows 10 device - PC, Mobile, Xbox, IoT, and HoloLens – and even for existing desktop apps converted to UWP using the Desktop Bridge. Also, the feedback from the community on this project will be reflected in future versions of the Windows SDK for Windows 10.

The UWP Community Toolkit 1.0 can be used by any new or existing UWP application written in C# or VB.NET, and is compatible with apps developed with Windows 10 SDK Build 10586 or above. The toolkit is available as NuGet packages (Microsoft.Toolkit.UWP) that can be added to any existing or new project using Visual Studio. NuGet is a standard package manager for .Net applications that is built into Visual Studio. If you need to check out the toolkit in action before jumping into the code, you can download the UWP Community Toolkit Sample App from the Windows Store, and explore the toolkit capabilities even before installing the tools or downloading the SDK.

The toolkit is completely open-sourced on GitHub found below, including the source code of the toolkit, the source code of the sample app and even the documentation.

UWP Community Toolkit on GitHub