🎉 XAML Studio Open Sourced, Blog, and History

[michael-hawker]

XAML Studio is Open Source

I'm happy to announce today that XAML Studio is now open source! 🎉🎉🎉 A big thanks to the .NET Foundation to helping make this journey happen and allow us to become a new seed project within the organization. Help us by giving us a star, participating, and contributing to the repository!

This has been a long time in the making, but I'm super happy to be able to get a ton of new improvements to the tool in WinUI XAML developers' hands! The code here today in the dev branch has been improved since the last update to the version in the Microsoft Store with a whole fresh coat of paint and many new features:

📝 You can read more about the open sourcing of XAML Studio on the blog here including an overview of all the bits of XAML Studio that have actually been open sourced before now (mostly via the Windows Community Toolkit)!

🧪 You can find out more about the new features coming within XAML Studio v2 in the repo readme or by exploring the 💭 feature-feedback section of the discussions. Let us know your thoughts once you've tried the new XAML Studio out! We look forward to getting feedback before a stable release of v2.

History 📖

I wanted to take this opportunity to share the journey of XAML Studio and how it started nearly a decade ago in July of 2017!

This is the first screenshot of the original prototype, "XamlPad+" from July 26, 2017:

With this amazing original logo 😅:

The XamlPad+ prototype was inspired as a revival of all these types of tools of the past for WPF (XamlPad, XamlPadX, Kaxaml, etc...). Unfortunately, the original code for this prototype is lost, but most of that code and functionality lives on within XAML Studio.

Date	Notes
July 21, 2017	Started Monaco Editor for UWP project for easier C# interop.
July 26, 2017	Had built original prototype of XamlPad+ during a hackathon, as seen above. Original prototype had support for folders which didn't make it into XAML Studio 1.0, but is now within the 2.0 codebase's dev branch.
Aug 25, 2017	First thoughts about open sourcing the project.
Aug 30, 2017	Integrated some learnings and tech from XamlPad+ into the Windows Community Toolkit Sample App for their 2.0 release with its Live XAML Sample Editor:
Feb 5, 2018	Submit to Microsoft Garage Ship Channel for a "XAML Studio", the name wasn't the official project name yet, at this time.
Feb 22, 2018	First commit to new "XAML Studio" repo, still called XamlPad+.
April 5, 2018	XAML Studio put forth as top candidate for new project name
July 13, 2018	New XAML Studio Logo
July 2018	Another hackathon, swarmed with a few great engineers to lift initial vision into place including @JustinXinLiu, @HerrickSpencer, @shanebweaver, and @JuanMejiaVelez.
Jan 16, 2019	v1.0 release with Live and Interactable Preview, Live Binding Debugger, Data Context Editor, Auto-save/Restore, IntelliSense, Toolbox, Alignment Guides, and Namespace Helpers. Original Garage Release Blog Original Garage Project Page
Jan 18, 2019	v1.0.1 release addressing some minor fixes found with release.
Dev 29, 2019	v1.1 release adding Pane Rotation, Share, Library Updates, and other minor improvements.
Jan & Jul 2020	Improve ResourceDictionary Viewer (hidden v1 feature). #41
Nov 25, 2020	An initial attempt started to open source XAML Studio.
Mar 2022	Work on bringing folder support back into codebase from XamlPad+ prototype. #39 Add more Quick Access buttons. #38
Jun 2022	Add initial BreadcrumbBar for XAML Doc Navigation. #37
Sep 2022	Worked on initial prototype of XAML Adorners for a hackathon in WCT Labs.
Jan 2024	Update to Windows Community Toolkit 8.0! Start migration to MVVM Toolkit.
Feb 2024	Start prototype of Highlight Mode #43, Live Visual Tree inspection #45, Live Properties Activity #44 with Modify mode using Adorners #47.
Mar 2025	Prototype some future ideas out for what things could look like post V2
Aug 29, 2025	Kick-off latest open source journey via .NET Foundation
Nov 2025	Modernize the application's titlebar #35. Create SelectedContentControl. Test Visual State Watcher #46
Dec 25, 2025	XAML Llama previews XAML Studio v2 on Social Media with the #12DaysOfXAML
Jan 6, 2026	XAML Studio Open Sourced! 🎉 Historical through v2 Alpha codebase. See start of post for links to more info.

Previously Open Sourced Code

A summary from the open sourcing of XAML Studio on the blog here of the components of XAML Studio code which have been open sourced in some form prior to this release:

Control	Source	Date/Release	Description
Monaco Editor Wrapper	GitHub/NuGet	Aug 2017	C# interop to the Monaco Code Editor.
SwitchPresenter	WCT	7.0	A control for allowing switches in XAML.
Sizer controls	WCT	8.0	Modernized and generalized sizing controls like ContentSizer and GridSplitter.
Vertical Segmented	WCT	8.3 planned	Alternate orientation for the Segmented control, thanks @Avid29!
Adorners	WCT Labs	Nov 2025	Modern XAML based Adorner Overlays.
SelectedContentControl	Gist	Nov 21, 2025	Helper for alternate content layouts compared to a FlipView or TabView for instance, to be added to WCT.

Thanks for joining us on this journey! 🦙❤️

- Michael A. Hawker a.k.a. XAML Llama