ModernWPF UI Library

Modern styles and controls for your WPF applications.

Maintenance status

ModernWpf is restarting active maintenance on a new 1.x line.

Line	Status	Support
0.9.x	Legacy	Security-only fixes for existing applications.
1.x	Active preview	New maintenance line for current WPF applications.

The NuGet package name remains ModernWpfUI. The first 1.x maintenance release candidate is 1.0.0-preview.1. See the 1.x public API contract for the forward-compatibility boundary and the comparison with 0.9.x, current WinUI, and official WPF Fluent. Applications upgrading from 0.9.x should also read the migration guide and preview release notes.

Supported targets

Target framework	Theme source	Notes
net462	ModernWpf Fluent backport	Compatibility target for existing .NET Framework WPF apps.
net8.0-windows7.0	ModernWpf Fluent backport	Current LTS target for WPF apps.
net10.0-windows7.0	WPF platform Fluent theme plus ModernWpf controls	Uses the official PresentationFramework.Fluent resources for stock WPF controls.

Features

• Modern styles and new features for the majority of the stock WPF controls.

• Light and dark themes that can be easily customized. A high contrast theme is also included.

• Additional controls to help you build modern applications. Some are ported from the Windows UI Library.

• Targets .NET Framework 4.6.2, .NET 8 for Windows, and .NET 10 for Windows.

Quick start

1. Create a new WPF app.

2. Install from NuGet Install-Package ModernWpfUI.

3. Edit App.xaml to use the recommended 1.x resource entry:

<Application
    ...
    xmlns:ui="http://schemas.modernwpf.com/2019">
    <Application.Resources>
        <ResourceDictionary>
            <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
                <ui:ThemeResources />
                <ui:FluentControlsResources UseCompactResources="False" />
            </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
        </ResourceDictionary>
    </Application.Resources>
</Application>

FluentControlsResources uses the official WPF Fluent theme on net10.0-windows7.0 and the ModernWpf Fluent backport on older supported targets. On net10.0-windows7.0, ThemeManager.ApplicationTheme and window ThemeManager.RequestedTheme are also bridged to the official WPF ThemeMode APIs. Element-level theme islands continue to use ModernWpf's WinUI-compatible resource dictionaries so existing per-control theme scopes keep working on every supported target.

For existing 0.9.x applications, the old resource entry remains supported:

<Application
    ...
    xmlns:ui="http://schemas.modernwpf.com/2019">
    <Application.Resources>
        <ResourceDictionary>
            <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
                <ui:ThemeResources />
                <ui:XamlControlsResources />
            </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
        </ResourceDictionary>
    </Application.Resources>
</Application>

4. Edit MainWindow.xaml to following:

<Window
    ...
    xmlns:ui="http://schemas.modernwpf.com/2019"
    ui:WindowHelper.UseModernWindowStyle="True">
    <ui:StackPanelEx Margin="12" Spacing="24">
        <TextBlock Text="My first ModernWPF app" Style="{StaticResource HeaderTextBlockStyle}" />
        <Button Content="I am a button" />
        <Button Content="I am an accent button" Style="{StaticResource AccentButtonStyle}" />
    </ui:StackPanelEx>
</Window>

5. See the wiki for more information.

Build and run the Gallery

The sample application for the active 1.x line is ModernWpf.Gallery (formerly ModernWpf.SampleApp). Build the Gallery project directly so unrelated test and integration projects are not required.

On Windows, install the .NET SDK selected by global.json. If you use Visual Studio, also install the .NET desktop development workload. Then run these commands from the repository root:

dotnet restore .\ModernWpf.Gallery\ModernWpf.Gallery.csproj
dotnet build .\ModernWpf.Gallery\ModernWpf.Gallery.csproj --configuration Debug --framework net10.0-windows7.0 --no-restore
dotnet run --project .\ModernWpf.Gallery\ModernWpf.Gallery.csproj --configuration Debug --framework net10.0-windows7.0 --no-build

Use net8.0-windows7.0 instead to run that supported target. Building net462 also requires the .NET Framework 4.6.2 Developer Pack. In Visual Studio, open ModernWpf.sln, set ModernWpf.Gallery as the startup project, choose a supported target framework, and start debugging.

The built executable is written under ModernWpf.Gallery\bin\Debug\<target-framework>\ModernWpf.Gallery.exe. GitHub releases publish the library packages rather than a separate Gallery binary.

Packages

NuGet Package	Latest Versions
ModernWpfUI

Screenshots