WinUI 3 Designer for Visual Studio
A real visual designer for WinUI 3 XAML — right inside Visual Studio. Click any element to edit it in the Properties window. Drag to move or reparent. Drop in new controls from the Toolbox. Works with Visual Studio 2022 and Visual Studio 2026.
Free.
Visual editing for WinUI 3 XAML, inside Visual Studio
Open a XAML file. See your layout. Click any control to edit it. Drag to move, drop into a Grid cell to reparent. Save the file. The designer slots into the Visual Studio document tab next to your other files — no separate window, no separate process to manage, no project changes to install.
Capabilities
Four properties that make the designer feel like a native Visual Studio surface.
Click, edit, see it live
Click any element on the design surface and Visual Studio’s standard Properties window fills with its values. Edit a property and the preview updates instantly. Undo and Redo work the way they do for every other file in Visual Studio.
Drag to move, reparent, and reorder
Drag a control to reposition it. Drop it into a Grid cell with snap. Drop it into a different container to reparent. The whole move is one Undo step away — no half-applied state, no manual XAML cleanup.
Live data preview
Flip Live Data on and the preview renders with your real ViewModel and your real services — exactly the way the page will look at runtime. Custom controls, application resources, theme overrides all show up as they will ship.
Preserves your XAML
Comments, whitespace, and attribute order survive every edit. Diff-friendly output, every time. The designer pauses automatically during build and debug — no file locks, no fights.
Design WinUI 3 visually
Free from the Visual Studio Marketplace. Install in under a minute and open your first .xaml file in the new designer.