Panos Panay, Chief Product Officer, Windows and Devices: “The team and I are excited to be backbarleywith the developer community this year. Over the past year, Windows has continued to experience incredible growth, fueled by the introduction of Windows 11. Indeed, one of the most exciting areas driving Windows growth is the developers themselves, with a 24% year-over-year increase in monthly units used for development.”
“AI is the defining technology of our time, and developers are at the forefront of this transformation. With the right tools, we can empower developers and our mutual customers to create the future and make their mark on the world. We're just getting started.” See the incredible impact AI is having across industries and in our daily lives. Today, the team and I are excited to share the next steps we're taking on our journey with Windows 11 to accommodate this new age of AI."
- With the introduction of Windows Copilot, Windows 11 is the first PC platform to announce centralized AI support to help people take action and get things done easily.
- We're extending the Bing Chat plugins for Windows and enabling developers to integrate their apps with Windows Copilot to better serve their customers and increase interaction with native Windows applications.
- Introducing a new hybrid AI loop to support cross-platform and cross-Azure AI development for clients with new silicon support from AMD, Intel, Nvidia and Qualcomm.
- Introducing Dev Home, designed to help every developer be more productive on Windows.
- We're introducing new AI features and experiences to the Microsoft Store on Windows.
We can't wait to share more with you tomorrow during our Windows keynote.Be sure to sign up for Build and Tune In!
Introducing Windows Copilot for Windows 11:
We're excited to introduce you to Windows Copilot. Windows is the first PC platform to offer customers centralized AI support. Together with Bing Chat and first and third party plugins, you can focus on bringing your ideas to life, completing complex projects and collaborating instead of wasting energy searching, launching and working in multiple applications.
Invoking Windows Copilot is familiar and simple - the button is front and center on your taskbar - easy to find and use. Once opened, the Windows Copilot sidebar stays consistent across your apps, programs, and windows, ready to be your personal assistant whenever you need it. It turns any user into a superuser and helps you shop, customize your settings, and connect to your favorite apps. The things you love about Windows — copy/paste, Snap Assist, Snipping Tool, personalization — are all there for you, along with every other feature on the platform, and they only get better with Windows Copilot. For example, in addition to copying and pasting, you can ask Windows Copilot to paraphrase, summarize, or explain your content.
Just like Bing Chat, you can ask Windows Copilot a range of simple to complex questions. When I want to call my family in Cyprus, I can quickly check the local time to make sure I'm not waking them up in the middle of the night. If I want to plan a trip to visit them in Cyprus, I can ask Windows Copilot to find flights and accommodation for my family for the midwinter break.
With the Bing and ChatGPT plugins in Windows Copilot, users not only get access to advanced AI capabilities and experiences, but you, the developer, also get new ways to reach and innovate for our mutual customers. We warmly welcome you to be part of the Windows Copilot journey by continuing to invest in the Bing and ChatGPT plugins so that your investments are transferred to Windows Copilot.
Windows Copilot will be available in preview for Windows 11 in June, stay tuned andLogin hereto get updates from the team.
Empowers any Windows 11 developer to be an AI developer
We continue to invest in key tools to democratize app development for the new age of AI. Whether you develop on x86/x64 or Arm64, we want to make it easy for you to deliver AI-powered experiences in Windows apps across the cloud and edge.
Last year at Build, we announced Hybrid Loop, a new development pattern that enables hybrid AI scenarios across Azure and client devices. Today we're excited to announce that our vision is furthered by using ONNX Runtime as a gateway to Windows AI and Olive, a toolchain we've developed to help you optimize models for different Windows and other entities relieve, has become a reality. With ONNX Runtime, third-party developers have access to the same tools we use internally to run AI models on Windows or other devices via CPU, GPU, NPU, or hybrid with Azure.
ONNX Runtime now supports the same API for running models on the device or in the cloud, enabling hybrid inference scenarios where your app can use local resources when possible and move to the cloud when needed. With the new Azure EP preview, you can connect to models implemented in AzureML or even to the Azure OpenAI service. With just a few lines of code, you can specify the cloud endpoint and define your criteria for when to use the cloud. This gives you more control over costs and user experience, as Azure EP gives you the flexibility to choose between using the larger model in the cloud or the smaller model on-premises at runtime.
You can also optimize your models for different hardware targets with Olive, an extensible toolchain that combines state-of-the-art model compression, optimization, and compilation techniques. And you can use ONNX Runtime on platforms like Windows, iOS, Android and Linux, so your Windows AI investment can be extended to all your app platforms.
BothONNX Runtime und OliveHelp get your AI models deployed to apps faster. ONNX Runtime makes it easy for you to create amazing AI experiences on Windows and other platforms with less effort and better performance.
We are expanding our vision for an AI-powered future in collaboration with our partners
Windows 11 features the largest and most powerful GPU ecosystem in the world with more than 200 million AI-enabled discrete GPUs. Windows PCs like Surface Studio 2+ and PCs from partners like Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Samsung are poweredNVIDIAGPU's. Developers can use these GPUs today to run cutting-edge Transformer models like Dolly 2.0, Stable Diffusion, and NVIDIA's NeMo, pre-optimized for Windows.
NPUs (Neural Processing Units) are specially designed accelerators for the efficient execution of AI models. Our partners continue to innovate and deliver - just likeQualcommwith the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 Compute Platform enabling Windows devices like the Surface Pro 9 5G and the Windows Dev Kit 2023 today. With the Olive & ONNX Runtime, you can leverage the Qualcomm AI Engine Direct SDK to run AI models on the 8cx Gen 3 compute platform NPU.
We're excited to see all of our silicon partners launching more Windows devices with NPUs later this year.AMDrecently gave developers early access to Ryzen AI software to run AI models on AMD Ryzen 7040-series processors with Ryzen AI. Intel previewed its new Meteor Lake product, an all-new chiplet SoC architecture that will feature Intel's first integrated AI engine, which will scale to the entire Windows ecosystem later this year and also provide developer tools including ONNX runtime support enabled by OpenVino. EP and DirectML EP.
Partners like WhatsApp, Luminar Neo, and Camo are achieving incredible leaps in performance and unlocking new end-user experiences by using NPUs to run their AI models. Bring your apps to the Windows platform and leverage the ONNX Runtime to deliver AI experiences like Camo. We can't wait to see what the Windows developer community will come up with with these new AI toolchains and NPU hardware advancements.
New experiences designed to help every developer be more productive on Windows 11
Life as a developer means constantly juggling manual development engine setups, too many clicks, multiple tool logins, navigating with sub-optimal file system performance, and context switching. We know that these disruptions can severely impact your productivity. Today we're excited to announce new features and enhancements across all stages of the Windows development cycle.
Introducing Dev Home: Your New Productivity Companion:
With a renewed focus on your productivity, we announce a new home for developers on Windows - Dev Home. Dev Home is a new experience in Windows 11, now in preview, that puts you back in the zone and streamlines your workflow with features like WinGet configuration for easier and faster setup, Dev Drive for improved file system performance, and a new customizable dashboard to keep track of all your workflows and tasks in one place. With Dev Home, you can easily connect to GitHub and configure your computer to program for the repos you are interested in by simply installing the tools and packages you need. Dev Home can also set up your coding environments in the cloud using Microsoft Dev Box and GitHub Codespaces. With Dev Home, built by and for developers, you now have your ultimate productivity companion, so you can focus on what you do best - writing code.Pick upthe Dev Home preview in the Microsoft Store today.Learn more about Dev Home.
Unattended and reliable developer engine setup: Reduces setup time from days to hours
With the new WinGet configuration you can program with just a few clicks. This unattended, reliable, and repeatable mechanism allows you to skip the manual hassle of configuring a new machine or onboarding a new project, and simplifies the search for the right version of software, packages, tools, and frameworks to download or the settings to apply superfluous. WinGet configuration reduces this manual and error-prone process to a single command with a WinGet configuration file. Just run "winget configure" in command prompt and when it's done you can start coding!Learn more about WinGet configuration.
Introducing Dev Drive: a new storage volume tailored specifically for developers, designed for performance and security:
We know that you often deal with repositories containing many thousands of files and folders, and in the past this has been a challenge for heavy I/O operations like builds.
Today we're announcing Dev Drive - a new type of storage volume, tailor-made for developers, with a file system that offers both performance and security.
Dev Drive is based on the Resilient File System which, combined with a new performance feature in Microsoft Defender for Antivirus, provides up to a 30% improvement in file system creation times for file I/O scenarios. Safer for your workloads than directory or process exclusions, the new performance mode offers an ultimate solution for balancing security and performance.
Dev Home makes it easy to configure Dev Drive as part of the environment setup process. It's great for hosting project source code, working directories, and package caches. The Dev Drive is available in preview later this week.Now create a Dev Drive.
Effectively track your workflows on a new customizable dashboard in Dev Home:
Dev Home also helps you manage any type of project you're working on - Windows, cloud, web, mobile or AI - and provides all the information you need in a customizable dashboard. You can enhance the Dev Home experience by adding GitHub widgets to efficiently track all coding tasks or pull requests and projects from one central location, and System widgets to track CPU and GPU performance. We're working with Team Xbox to bring GDK to Dev Home and make it easier to get started with game creation. Want to add your own custom extensions? You can do this on Dev Home.
Dev Home is open source. We value the input of the community on this experience and would like to develop it further together with you. Contribute and get involved with us atGitHub-Depot.
Dev Home is in preview today, you canInstaller Dev Homeavailable today in the Microsoft Store.
Your favorite tool, Windows Terminal, gets smarter with GitHub Copilot X
GitHub Copilot users can use natural language AI both inline and in an experiential chat experience to recommend commands, explain errors, and take actions in the terminal application. We're also experimenting with GitHub Copilot-powered AI in other developer tools like WinDBG to help you get the job done with less wear and tear.
Participate inGitHub Copilot Chat waitlistto access these features as they become available.
Reduces wear and tear and brings the fun and joy of developing on Windows with new features and improvements
The team has been listening carefully to what improvements you're most focused on, including improvements to the taskbar:
- You can now quickly identify and access any instance of any app in the taskbar with just one click. All instances of the app are not grouped with labels in the taskbar.
- You can now hide your time and date with a taskbar setting. This option allows users to hide the time to stay focused and take screen captures without having to edit the time and date. The feature is on the Time and Date Settings page in Windows Settings.
Next to…
- We added native support for additional archive formats including tar, 7-zip, rar, gz and many others using the libarchive open source project. You can now get improved performance of the archiving feature during compression on Windows.
- We're adding tab tearout to the Windows terminal so you can easily organize your different shells into windows based on your needs.
Continue to innovate and accelerate development for Windows on Arm
We started last yearWindows Dev Kit 2023and ARM native versions of Visual Studio and .NET to speed up development on ARM. Windows continues this momentum and welcomes more third-party Windows apps, middleware partners, and open-source software integrated with Arm.Learn how to add arm support to your apps.
Close applications quickly and easily with a single right click on the app right in the taskbar without opening the task list.
- Visual Studio 17.6 now ships with MAUI support for ARM.
- Visual Studio 17.71 Preview 1 is now shipping with support for Linux development with C++.
- LLVM v12.0 and later for cross-compilation and native compilation options for ARM.
- Node 20.0.0 will be available in April with integrated arm support.
- The WiX Installer v4.0 is available to create native installers for Arm.
- New middleware projects released in the last 12 months: Qt 6.2, CMake 3.24, Bazel, 5.1, OpenSSL 3.0, OpenBLAS, 0.3.21, Python 3.11.
- unity player: Unity Player is now generally available for Windows on Arm. Developers using the game engine can easily leverage Windows on Arm devices for native performance of current and future titles.
- Other Arm64 solutions are coming soon, for example GNU GCC, Flutter & Dart, PyTorch, GIMP.
In addition to Microsoft's investment in the ARM platform, there are many developers who recognize the value of native ARM support and have released native ARM64 versions of their experiences to provide the best experience for their customers.
Here are just some of the latest products to hit the market:
- Luminar Neo
- TopHatch Concepts
- Adobe fresh
- Zoom
- Prime-Video
- Brave browser
- Sketchable Plus
- Symantec Endpoint Security
- VMware Carbon Black
- McAfee Total Protection
- BitDefender Endpoint Security
- Totally secure endpoint
- Kiefer
- LibreOffice
And many more planned for release in the near future:
- Dropbox
- Genkuber-Camouflage
- Cisco WebEx
- Plex
- Unit
New features to motivate your users
Illuminated accessories are on the rise and can add energy and emotion to your PC experience. Today, many of these accessories rely on third-party apps and integrations, which are highly fragmented. With Dynamic Lighting, Windows users can easily configure and customize their devices with RGB lighting directly in Windows settings. It has never been easier to make all your RGB accessories work seamlessly together for Windows apps. This month, we're making the Dynamic Lighting preview available to Windows Insiders so developers and hardware partners alike can experiment with new integrations for RGB accessories and components.
New features and experiences in the Microsoft Store on Windows
Our goal is not only to give you the best tools to build great apps, but we also improve the Microsoft Store, an open platform on Windows that gives you the reach and growth you desire.
Today we're excited to announce new AI-powered capabilities, expanded Microsoft Store ads, and new tools to help you reach your customers:
- Microsoft Store AI Hub: We will soon be launching a dedicated section in the Microsoft Store for Windows that brings together the best AI experiences from the developer community and Microsoft.
- Keywords generated by the Microsoft Store AI: To improve app discovery, we're introducing a new tool in Partner Center that uses AI to generate and suggest search tags for apps to improve visibility.
- AI generated review summary: We're making it faster and easier for customers to scan reviews for apps, using the power of AI to collate thousands of reviews into one simple dashboard so customers can easily discover new content.
- Microsoft Store Ads: Beginning in June, Microsoft Store Ads will expand its presence beyond the US to more than 150 regions worldwide. You'll also have more ways to reach customers with a new high-traffic Premium Spotlight placement in Store and Bing.com search results.
- Backup and restore apps: To help you retain your customers when they switch devices, we're improving the backup and restore experience for apps. This update is in preview and available to Windows Insiders today.
To learn more about what we announced today in the Microsoft Store for Windows, including new AI-powered experiences and developer tools,Visit this blog post.
Building together on and for the future of Windows
It's an exciting time to be a developer, especially on Windows, and we're excited to be a part of this journey with you. As soon as you open your device, you have the ultimate productivity tools at your fingertips to help you get the most out of your work. With the incredible momentum this new era of AI brings, we can't wait to see what you create next.
We want to give you the opportunity to focus your time on building and creating code that only you can write. With our renewed focus on Supercharger developer productivity, we believe Windows now offers the best platform for you to create breakthrough experiences for your customers, and it's also the best platform for you to reach those customers , and all with minimal cost and effort. We are honored to be on this journey with you.
To learn more about these incredible new features, explore our newWindows Developer Centerbrings our news and resources to you in one place. For our Windows Insiders, later this week you can access a number of these new features in an Insider Preview build. And be sure to check out our various Microsoft Build sessions to learn more about everything we've announced.