Microsoft wants more native apps and elements on Windows 11, and so should you. Native apps and native code mean better performance and smoother computing. At Build 2026, Microsoft held several sessions to help third-party developers make native applications.
A core part of the Windows K2 initiative is to rebuild pieces like the Start menu as native components, but that’s only part of the effort. For the entire Windows experience to improve, third-party developers need to embrace native Windows apps.
In this piece, native refers to modern Windows apps built with the latest Windows frameworks, such as WinUI 3. Native can also describe apps compiled for a specific architecture like ARM64, but that’s a separate topic. Here I’m focusing on Windows‑native apps, not architecture‑native builds.
Microsoft is building its own team of experts to make native in-box apps and experiences for Windows 11. The tech giant also has several tools and pieces of advice for developers that want to create native apps.
A session at Build 2026 titled “Use agents to build WinUI 3 apps” taught how to use agents to assist in the development of native apps. During the session, Beth Pan and Nikola Metulev explained how to create new WinUI 3 apps, improve existing apps, and migrate apps to use the Windows UI stack.
Migrating to the WinUI 3 framework can be tricky when using AI tools. Agents and models are often trained generically, meaning they’ll show unoptimized results. The WinUI agent plugin for GitHub Copilot and Claude Code is a specialized AI agent that pull WinUI skills by default.
That’s one of many tools made available to developers. Microsoft also has WinUI 3 templates (in preview) to streamline native app creation.
Another Build session breaks down how to modernize apps with AI. “Modernizing apps isn’t just rewriting code—it’s untangling dependencies, tracing data flows, and making changes without breaking production,” explains the session description.
Developers relying heavily on AI will need hardware that can cope. The Surface Laptop Ultra was announced at Computex, but you can bet it was mentioned at Build.
The Surface Laptop Ultra is built to handle AI agents. It will be available with up to 128GB of RAM and is the first Surface to be built on the NVIDIA RTX Spark platform.
That platform combines the N1x CPU (20-core Arm), an RTX GPU (up to 6,144 cores), and unified memory to deliver up to 1 petaflop of AI compute.
The new NVIDIA Spark laptops can handle creative apps and even games, but they’re also a power play by Microsoft to win over developers.
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