No, Windows Start does not use React

No, Windows Start does not use React

Windows is in the news again. This time Microsoft has put out a standard corporate Our commitment to Windows quality post concerning many features/changes to Windows that have been made primarily in Windows 11.

There’s not much to their commitment where I feel like they’re doing some massive pivot. I feel like this mostly PR to appease the loudest of the crowd. However, this post has been making the rounds on sites like Windows Central and as such people are over-reacting (I swear that was unintentional) to this news, and I believe misinformation in Windows Central’s own post is partially to blame.

Are we really still talking about this?

Microsoft is also vowing to use its native Windows UI framework, WinUI, in more areas of the system, such as the Start menu, which up until now has been built using React. Switching to native WinUI should improve performance, thanks in part to major performance upgrades to WinUI that Microsoft is also promising to deliver this year.

This is where misinformation rears its head again. No, Windows Start isn’t built on React. No part of the start menu actually uses React. I can see where people get confused though, because naming things are hard and often similar names can easily point someone in the wrong direction.

This is the Windows 11 start menu. See that Recommended section at the bottom of it? That is built with React Native for Windows. No, that is not a full JavaScript framework in your start menu. There’s no web view / browser running gobbling up your resources. It’s React Native for Windows which is a flavor of React Native that directly calls Windows APIs including, you guessed it, WinUI 3.

So that’s it. Windows Start has a very small section (that can be disabled) that’s written in a framework that follows React principles and compiles down to native code. Yes, there’s probably a performance hit. No, it’s probably not that big, and it’s probably even faster than if you were to write it in C#/.NET. Yes, there are way too many UI frameworks, and yes there are some important parts of the OS that need an overhaul, and this is probably superfluous. But this was changed years ago and isn’t the result of AI slop. Can we move on now?