Microsoft Senior Engineer Announces: Native Apps Return, Windows Bids Farewell to Web Wrappers

Fowler has worked at Microsoft for over a decade, deeply involved in the construction of core development platforms such as .NET and ASP.NET Core, and his statement is seen as an important indicator of the internal engineering direction.

A prominent controversy surrounding Windows 11 in recent years has been the adoption of web technology for a large number of system components, essentially implementing desktop applications using web technology wrappers.

Currently, the applications in the Microsoft Store are mainly web applications, and core components at the system level, such as the Start Menu, are also built based on web frameworks like React.

This approach reduces development costs, but at the cost of high startup latency, large memory usage, and less smooth interaction compared to traditional native applications.

According to previous reports, Microsoft has already begun migrating some key experiences from web components to native technology. The Start Menu is transitioning from the React-based Shell component to the WinUI framework to reduce latency and improve responsiveness.

The key technical support for achieving this goal comes from the recently released .NET 10, which introduces Native AOT (Ahead-of-Time) compilation technology, which can shorten application startup time and reduce memory usage.

Both Fowler and Huyn have not disclosed specific timelines and migration scopes, but judging from the successive statements of the two senior engineers, Windows 11's "de-webification" has entered a substantial promotion stage.