Windows 10 SDK

The Windows 10 SDK (10.0.18362.0) for Windows 10, version 1903 provides the latest headers, libraries, metadata, and tools for building Windows 10 apps.

Use this SDK to build Universal Windows Platform (UWP) and Win32 applications for Windows 10, version 1903 and previous Windows releases.

Getting started

There are two ways to get the Windows 10 SDK. You can install it from this web site, by selecting the download link, or you can by select this version of the Windows 10 SDK (10.0.18362.0) in the Visual Studio 2019 Installer optional components.

Before you install this SDK:

  1. Review all system requirements below.
  2. Exit Visual Studio 2019 prior to installation.
  3. Review the Known Issues below.
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System requirements

The Windows SDK has the following minimum system requirements:

Supported operating systems

  • Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app development
    • Windows 10 version 1507 or higher: Home, Professional, Education, and Enterprise (LTSB and S are not supported)
    • Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2016 and Windows Server 2012 R2 (Command line only)
  • Win32 app development
    • Windows 10 version 1507 or higher
    • Windows Server 2016: Standard and Datacenter
    • Windows 8.1
    • Windows Server 2012 R2
    • Windows 7 SP1

(Not all tools are supported on earlier operating systems)

Hardware requirements

  • 1.6 GHz or faster processor
  • 1 GB of RAM
  • 4 GB of available hard disk space

Additional SDK requirements

Installation on Windows 8.1 and earlier operating systems requires KB2999226. To install through Windows Update, make sure you install the latest recommended updates and patches from Microsoft Update before you install the Windows SDK.

What's new

The Windows 10 SDK for Windows 10, version 1903 offers exciting new APIs and updated tools for developing your Windows applications. Learn more about the new features in Windows 10, version 1903.

APIs

To see the new APIs introduced with Windows 10, version 1903, see: What's new in Windows 10 for developers, build 18362.

Windows 10 WinRT API Pack

The Windows 10 WinRT API Pack lets you add the latest Windows Runtime APIs support to your .NET Framework 4.5+ and .NET Core 3.0+ libraries and apps. To access the Windows 10 WinRT API Pack, see the Microsoft.Windows.SDK.Contracts nuget package.

Tools

Windows App Certification Kit

In this release of the Windows SDK, a number of new APIs were added to the Supported APIs list in the App Certification Kit and Windows Store. However some of those APIs will appear greyed out or disabled in Visual Studio. To access those APIs in your application see this known issue. For a complete list of the APIs added to the supported API List for Windows build 1903, please see.

MC.EXE

We’ve made some important changes to the C/C++ ETW code generation of Message Compiler (MC, or mc.exe):
Message Compiler (mc.exe)

  • The “-mof” switch (to generate XP-compatible ETW helpers) is considered to be deprecated and will be removed in a future version of mc.exe. Removing this switch will cause the generated ETW helpers to expect Vista or later.
  • The “-A” switch (to generate .BIN files using ANSI encoding instead of Unicode) is considered to be deprecated and will be removed in a future version of mc.exe. Removing this switch will cause the generated .BIN files to use Unicode string encoding.
  • The behavior of the “-A” switch has changed. Prior to Windows 1607 Anniversary Update SDK, when using the -A switch, BIN files were encoded using the build system’s ANSI code page. In the Windows 1607 Anniversary Update SDK, mc.exe’s behavior was inadvertently changed to encode BIN files using the build system’s OEM code page. In the 19H1 SDK, mc.exe’s previous behavior has been restored and it now encodes BIN files using the build system’s ANSI code page. Note that the -A switch is deprecated, as ANSI-encoded BIN files do not provide a consistent user experience in multi-lingual systems.

Windows Performance Toolkit

In this release of Windows Performance Toolkit, we have added a few new features to Windows Performance Analyzer:

  • Right Click Menu for Column Headers allowing for “one click” changes to Column Aggregation, Format, & Modes
  • Utility Columns for CPU Tables (Sampled & Precise) which augments the Weight or Usage columns values by performance characteristics of the Processor Architecture

To get details on all features in the Windows Performance Toolkit, see the documentation.

Samples

Windows 10 app samples are now available through GitHub. You can browse the code on GitHub, clone a personal copy of the repository from Git, or download a zipped archive of all the samples. We welcome feedback, so feel free to open an issue within the repository if you have a problem or question. These samples are designed to run on desktop, mobile, and future devices that support the Universal Windows Platform (UWP).

Previous SDK versions

Previously released SDKs and emulators, including update details, can be found on the archive page.

API Light Up

When you use new APIs, consider writing your app to be adaptive so that it runs correctly on the widest array of Windows 10 devices. An adapative app "lights up" with new features wherever the devices and Windows version supports them, but otherwise offers only the functionality available on the detected platform version. For implementation details, see the Version adaptive code article. For the latest release notes or issues with tools, see the Windows Developer Forum.