The group and I are pumped to be again at Build with the developer neighborhood this yr.
Over the final yr, Windows has continued to see unimaginable development fueled by Windows 11 adoption. In truth, one of the vital thrilling areas driving that development for Windows has been builders themselves, with a 24% YoY improve in month-to-month units used for growth.
AI is the defining expertise of our time and builders are on the forefront of this transformation. With the best instruments we will empower builders and our shared prospects to form the long run and go away their mark on the world. We are simply beginning to see the unimaginable influence AI is having throughout industries and in our personal each day lives. Today, the group and I are excited to share the following steps we’re taking up our journey with Windows 11, to satisfy this new age of AI.
- We are introducing Windows Copilot, making Windows 11 the primary PC platform to announce centralized AI help to assist individuals simply take motion and get issues executed.
- We are extending Bing Chat plugins to Windows, enabling builders to combine their apps inside Windows Copilot to higher serve their prospects and improve engagement on native Windows purposes.
- We are introducing new Hybrid AI loop to assist AI growth throughout platform, and throughout Azure to consumer with new silicon assist from AMD, Intel, Nvidia and Qualcomm.
- We are introducing Dev Home designed to assist each developer turn out to be extra productive on Windows.
- We are introducing new AI options and experiences within the Microsoft Store on Windows.
We can’t wait to share extra with you tomorrow throughout our Windows keynote, be sure you register for Build and tune in!
Introducing Windows Copilot for Windows 11
We’re thrilled to introduce Windows Copilot. Windows is the primary PC platform to supply centralized AI help for patrons. Together, with Bing Chat and first- and third-party plugins, you’ll be able to concentrate on bringing your concepts to life, finishing complicated tasks and collaborating as a substitute of spending vitality discovering, launching and dealing throughout a number of purposes.
Invoking Windows Copilot is acquainted and straightforward – the button is entrance and heart in your taskbar – easy to seek out and use. Once open, the Windows Copilot aspect bar stays constant throughout your apps, applications and home windows, all the time out there to behave as your private assistant. It makes each person an influence person, serving to you are taking motion, customise your settings and seamlessly join throughout your favourite apps. The stuff you love about Windows – copy/paste, Snap Assist, Snipping Tool, personalization – they’re all proper there for you, together with each different function on the platform, they usually solely get higher with Windows Copilot. For instance, you cannot solely copy and paste, but in addition ask Windows Copilot to rewrite, summarize or clarify your content material.
Just such as you would with Bing Chat, you’ll be able to ask Windows Copilot a spread of questions from easy to complicated. If I need to name my household in Cyprus, I can shortly verify the native time to ensure I’m not waking them up in the midst of the night time. If I need to plan a visit to go to them in Cyprus, I can ask Windows Copilot to seek out my household flights and lodging for mid-winter break.
With Bing and ChatGPT plugins in Windows Copilot, individuals is not going to solely have entry to augmented AI capabilities and experiences, however you as builders may also have new methods to succeed in and innovate for our shared prospects. We welcome you to be a part of the Windows Copilot journey by persevering with to put money into Bing and ChatGPT plugins so your investments will carry ahead to Windows Copilot.
Windows Copilot will begin to turn out to be out there in preview for Windows 11 in June, keep tuned and enroll right here to get updates from the group.
Empowering each Windows 11 developer to be an AI developer
This is an unimaginable time to be a developer on Windows. The potentialities throughout industries – healthcare, finance, training, tech, and others – are limitless. We proceed to put money into necessary instruments to democratize how apps can be constructed for the brand new period of AI; whether or not you’re creating on x86/x64 or Arm64 we need to make it simple so that you can carry AI powered experiences in Windows apps throughout cloud and edge.
If you might be simply getting began with AI or if you’re questioning the place to begin, Microsoft and Windows are right here that can assist you on that journey. Today, we’re asserting the Windows AI Library, which can home a curated assortment of prepared to make use of machine studying fashions and APIs that may assist jumpstart your AI growth. We will share extra particulars on the provision and preview dates within the coming weeks.
Last yr at Build, we introduced Hybrid Loop, a brand new growth sample that permits hybrid AI eventualities throughout Azure and consumer units. Today, we’re excited to share that our imaginative and prescient has turn out to be a actuality utilizing ONNX Runtime because the gateway to Windows AI and Olive, a toolchain we created to ease the burden on you when optimizing fashions for diverse Windows and different units. With ONNX Runtime, third-party builders have entry to the identical instruments we use internally to run AI fashions on Windows or different units throughout CPU, GPU, NPU, or hybrid with Azure.
ONNX Runtime now helps the identical API for working fashions on the machine or within the cloud, enabling hybrid inferencing eventualities the place your app can use native assets when potential and swap to the cloud when wanted. With the brand new Azure EP preview, you’ll be able to connect with fashions deployed in AzureML and even to the Azure OpenAI service. With just some strains of code you’ll be able to specify the cloud endpoint and outline your standards for when to make use of the cloud. This offers you extra management over prices and person expertise, as Azure EP offers you the flexibleness to decide on between utilizing the bigger mannequin within the cloud or the smaller native mannequin at runtime.
You can even optimize your fashions for various {hardware} targets with Olive, an extensible toolchain that mixes innovative strategies for mannequin compression, optimization and compilation. And you should use ONNX Runtime throughout platforms like Windows, iOS, Android and Linux, so your Windows AI funding can prolong to all of your app platforms.
Both ONNX Runtime and Olive contribute to the speed of getting your AI fashions deployed into apps. ONNX Runtime makes it simpler so that you can create wonderful AI experiences on Windows and different platforms, with much less engineering effort and higher efficiency.
Extending our imaginative and prescient for an AI powered future in collaboration with our companions
Windows 11 has the biggest and strongest ecosystem of GPUs on this planet with greater than 200M+ AI succesful discrete GPUs. Windows PCs like Surface Studio 2+, and PCs constructed by companions akin to Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Samsung are powered by NVIDIA GPUs. Developers can leverage these GPUs immediately to run cutting-edge transformer fashions like Dolly 2.0, Stable Diffusion and NVIDIA’s NeMo which can be pre-optimized for Windows.
NPUs (Neural Processing Units) are purpose-built accelerators to run AI fashions effectively. Our companions are persevering with to innovate and ship – like Qualcomm with the Snapdragon 8cx Gen3 Compute Platform which immediately permits Windows units together with the Surface Pro 9 5G and the Windows Dev Kit 2023. With Olive & ONNX Runtime you’ll be able to goal Qualcomm AI Engine Direct SDK to run AI fashions on the 8cx Gen 3 compute platform NPU.
We are excited to see all our silicon companions carry extra Windows units with NPUs to the market later this yr. AMD just lately made early entry of Ryzen™ AI software program out there to builders to run AI fashions on AMD Ryzen™ 7040 Series processors with Ryzen™ AI. Intel previewed their new Meteor Lake product, an all-new chiplet SoC structure that may function Intel’s first built-in AI engine which can scale throughout the Windows ecosystem beginning later this yr and also will make out there developer instruments, together with ONNX Runtime assist enabled by OpenVino-EP and DirectML-EP.
Partners akin to WhatsApp, Luminar Neo and Camo are reaching unimaginable leaps in efficiency and unlocking new end-user experiences by leveraging NPUs to run their AI fashions. Bring your apps to the Windows platform and leverage ONNX Runtime to ship AI experiences like Camo. We can’t wait to see what the Windows developer neighborhood will create with these new AI toolchains and NPU {hardware} developments.
New experiences designed to assist each developer turn out to be extra productive on Windows 11
Life as a developer includes consistently juggling handbook dev machine arrange with too many clicks, a number of instrument sign-ins, navigating sub-optimal filesystem efficiency and context switching, and we all know that these disruptions can considerably influence your productiveness. Today, we’re excited to announce new options and enhancements throughout all phases of the event cycle on Windows.
Introducing Dev Home: Your new productiveness companion
With a renewed focus in your productiveness, we’re asserting a brand new house for builders on Windows – Dev Home. Dev Home is a brand new expertise in Windows 11, now out there in preview, that will get you again within the zone and streamlines your workflow with options akin to WinGet configuration for simpler and sooner setup, Dev Drive for enhanced filesystem efficiency and a brand new customizable dashboard to trace all of your workflows and duties in a single place. Dev Home makes it simple to connect with GitHub and arrange your machine to code for the repos you care about, simply putting in the instruments and packages you want. Dev Home can even configure your coding environments within the cloud utilizing Microsoft Dev Box and GitHub Codespaces. With Dev Home, designed by and for builders, you now have your final productiveness companion so you’ll be able to concentrate on what you do finest – writing code. Download the preview of the Dev Home within the Microsoft Store immediately. Learn extra about Dev Home
Unattended and dependable dev machine setup: Reducing arrange time from days to hours
Get ready-to-code in just some clicks with the brand new WinGet configuration. This unattended, dependable and repeatable mechanism means that you can skip the handbook effort of organising a brand new machine or onboarding a brand new undertaking and removes the concern of trying to find the best model of software program, packages, instruments and frameworks to obtain or settings to use. WinGet configuration reduces this handbook and error-prone course of right down to a single command with a WinGet configuration file. Just run `winget configure ` within the command immediate and when it’s executed, you might be able to code! Learn extra about WinGet configuration
Introducing Dev Drive: A brand new storage quantity tailored for builders: supercharged for efficiency and safety
We know you usually take care of repositories containing many hundreds of information and directories, and traditionally this has offered a problem for heavy I/O operations akin to builds.
Today, we’re asserting Dev Drive – a brand new kind of storage quantity, tailored for builders, with a file system that delivers each efficiency and safety.
Dev Drive relies on the Resilient File System, which, mixed with a brand new efficiency mode functionality in Microsoft Defender for Antivirus, provides as much as 30% file system enchancment in construct instances for file I/O eventualities. The new efficiency mode is safer in your workloads than folder or course of exclusions, offering an final resolution to stability safety with efficiency.
Dev Home makes it easy to arrange Dev Drive as a part of the surroundings setup course of. It is supercharged to host undertaking supply code, working folders and bundle caches. Dev Drive is on the market in preview later this week. Create a Dev Drive now.
Efficiently observe your workflows on a brand new customizable dashboard in Dev Home
Dev Home additionally helps you handle any kind of undertaking you’re engaged on – Windows, cloud, internet, cell or AI – offering all the data you want, proper at your fingertips, in a single customizable dashboard. You can improve the Dev Home expertise by including GitHub widgets to effectively observe all coding duties or pull requests and tasks from one central location, and system widgets to trace CPU and GPU efficiency. We are collaborating with Team Xbox to carry the GDK to Dev Home to make it simple to get began with recreation creation. Looking so as to add your personal custom-built extensions? You can do that on Dev Home.
Dev house is open supply. We worth neighborhood enter on the expertise, and we need to construct this with you. Contribute and interact with us on the GitHub repository
Dev Home is in preview beginning immediately, you’ll be able to set up Dev Home from the Microsoft Store immediately.
Your favourite instrument, Windows Terminal is getting smarter with GitHub Copilot X
Users of GitHub Copilot will be capable to reap the benefits of pure language AI each inline and in an experimental chat expertise to suggest instructions, clarify errors and take actions throughout the Terminal software. We are additionally experimenting with GitHub Copilot powered AI in different developer instruments like WinDBG that can assist you full your duties with much less toil.
Join the GitHub Copilot Chat waitlist to achieve entry to those options as they turn out to be out there.
Reducing toil and unlocking the enjoyable and pleasure of growth on Windows with new options and enhancements
The group has listened carefully to what enhancements are prime of thoughts for you, together with enhancements to the Taskbar:
- You can now shortly establish and entry any occasion of every app housed within the taskbar with only one click on. All situations of the app are ungrouped with labels on the taskbar.
- You can now conceal your Time and Date with a setting on the taskbar. With this setting, customers will be capable to conceal the time to stay centered, seize display recordings with out having to edit to cover time and date. The function is positioned within the time and date settings web page in Windows Settings.
- Quickly and simply shut down purposes with a easy proper click on on the app straight from the taskbar with out opening the Task Manager.
In addition…
- We have added native assist for added archive codecs, together with tar, 7-zip, rar, gz and lots of others utilizing the libarchive open-source undertaking. You now can get improved efficiency of archive performance throughout compression on Windows.
- We are including tab tear-out to Windows Terminal so as to simply set up your completely different shells into home windows in response to your wants.
Continuing to innovate and speed up growth for Windows on Arm
In the previous yr, we launched the Windows Dev Kit 2023, and Arm native variations of Visual Studio and .NET to assist speed up growth on Arm. Windows is continuous this momentum and welcoming extra third-party Windows apps, middleware companions and Open-Source Software natively to Arm. Learn add Arm assist in your apps.
- Visual Studio 17.6 now ships with MAUI assist for Arm.
- Visual Studio 17.71 Preview 1 now ships with assist for Linux growth with C++.
- LLVM v12.0 and onwards for cross compile and native compile choices for Arm.
- Node 20.0.0 is on the market from April with native Arm assist.
- WiX installer v4.0 is on the market to create native installers for Arm.
- New middleware tasks which have launched within the final 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 usually out there for Windows on Arm natively. Developers utilizing the sport engine will be capable to simply goal Windows on Arm units to get native efficiency on present and future titles.
- Additional options are coming quickly to Arm64 For instance GNU GCC, Flutter & Dart, PyTorch, GIMP.
Beyond Microsoft’s funding within the Arm platform there are lots of builders that see the worth of Arm native assist and have launched Arm64 native variations of their experiences to present their prospects the perfect expertise.
Here are just some of the current merchandise launched:
And many extra with plans to launch within the close to future:
New options to maintain your customers engaged
Lighted equipment have been on the rise and may add vitality and emotion to your PC expertise. Today, many of those equipment depend on third-party apps and integrations which can be extremely fragmented. With Dynamic Lighting, Windows customers will be capable to effortlessly arrange and customise their units with RGB lights straight from Windows Settings. It has by no means been simpler to assist all of your RGB equipment seamlessly work collectively for Windows apps. This month, we’re making the Dynamic Lighting preview out there to Windows Insiders in order that builders and {hardware} companions alike can experiment with new integrations for RGB equipment and elements.
New options and experiences within the Microsoft Store on Windows
We are dedicated to not solely offering you with the perfect instruments to construct nice apps, however we’re additionally enhancing the Microsoft Store, an open platform on Windows that gives the attain and development that you simply search.
Today, we’re happy to announce new AI-powered options, expanded Microsoft Store Ads and new instruments that can assist you attain your prospects:
- Microsoft Store AI Hub: Coming quickly, we’re introducing a devoted part within the Microsoft Store on Windows that may curate the perfect AI experiences constructed by the developer neighborhood and Microsoft.
- Microsoft Store AI-Generated key phrases: To assist optimize app discovery, we’re introducing a brand new instrument in Partner Center that leverages AI to generate and recommend search tags for apps to enhance discoverability.
- AI-Generated evaluate abstract: We are making it sooner and simpler for patrons to scan opinions for apps through the use of the facility of AI to compile hundreds of opinions right into a easy abstract, enabling prospects to find new content material with ease.
- Microsoft Store Ads: Beginning in June, Microsoft Store Ads will broaden its footprint past the U.S., to greater than 150 areas worldwide. You may also have extra choices to succeed in prospects with a brand new premium, high-traffic highlight placement within the Store and Bing.com search outcomes.
- Backup and Restore Apps: To show you how to retain your prospects after they swap units, we’re enhancing the backup and restore expertise for apps. This replace is in preview and is on the market to Windows Insiders immediately.
To study extra about what we introduced within the Microsoft Store on Windows immediately, together with new AI-powered experiences and developer instruments, go to this weblog put up.
Building on and for the way forward for Windows, collectively
It’s an thrilling time to be a developer, much more so on Windows, and we’re thrilled to be on this journey with our you. From the second you open your machine, you’ll have the last word productiveness instruments at your fingertips, empowering you to do your finest work. With the unimaginable momentum that’s constructing round this new period of AI, we will’t wait to see what you’ll create subsequent.
We need to empower you to focus your time on creating and constructing – writing code that solely you’ll be able to write. With our renewed concentrate on supercharging developer productiveness, we consider Windows now offers the perfect platform so that you can create innovative experiences in your prospects and can be the perfect platform so that you can attain these prospects, all with minimal price and energy. We are humbled to be on this journey with you.
To study extra about these unimaginable new options, discover our new Windows Developer Center bringing our information and assets all into one location for you. For our Windows Insiders, you’ll be capable to begin accessing a set of those new options later this week in an Insider Preview Build. And be sure you take a look at our varied periods all through Microsoft Build to study extra about every part we introduced.
Update, May 24, 2023: This weblog put up was up to date so as to add further element on the AI library