Hi Ben,

Thank you so much for the update! This is great news for us as we (and our users) really miss the previous functionality. Really forward to the April release. Let me know if there's anything you need from our end.

Thanks again, Jurko

@totallymonkey @vidager That good enough and transparent. Well done Microsoft folk

Is it possible to create a widget that can run an .exe file if one is provided? I'm wondering if it is possible to develop a shortcut menu so users can pin and launch their games from the Xbox Game Bar.

Closing this for now. 3dfoster, please re-open if you don't believe your question was answered sufficiently. However, I think the UWP desktop bridge support is your best bet (as marck7jr mentioned).

Thanks, Ben

Describe A clear and concise description of what the bug is.

To Reproduce Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Copy RestrictedSamples's widget to WidgetAdvSampleCS's widget1 and widget2.. a. Update NETCore.UniversalWindowsPlatform nuget to 1 more version. WidgetAdvSampleCS is one version behind b. Copy Extensions\DispatcherTaskExtensions c. Copy widget1 class entirely

Expected behavior

1. The file picker should not crashed...
2. If Debug it is

 System.UnauthorizedAccessException
  HResult=0x80070005
  Message=Access is denied. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED))
  Source=<Cannot evaluate the exception source>
  StackTrace:
<Cannot evaluate the exception stack trace>

Additional context I am no sure, I feeling kinda stupid to even merge two sample. Any other config/setting or nuget update need to be done? The project's solution Link

Probably I doing wrong with these? But I haven click the widget 1's file picker and never clean it, before clicking widget2's file picker // Also, at this time you should let the XboxGameBarForegroundWorker object fall out of scope, as it is only allowed to be used once

Closing since there hasn't been activity since Oct 7 and it appears totallymonkey gave a workaround for development. If you have need to ship a widget with a Restricted API, you can reach out to us to add your widget to the allow list.

Thanks! Ben

Hi edwardchanjw,

For 3rd party widgets created through our SDK, we only support a single CoreWindow per widget identity specified in your manifest. So you can have X widgets ("views") for your app, but they each need to be independently activated by Game Bar. This must be done so we can bind the CoreWindow from your process to the XAML tree inside our ViewChrome (the Window that holds your content). XAML has some tricks where content can span outside that space, such as flyouts, but otherwise the content is constrained to your CoreWindow inside the Game Bar View Chrome.

When you get an activation for each of your widgets, you can pass a context to them (for example through page navigation if you use that). That context can be shared data that both widgets observe. This is how many widgets handle their settings, where the settings are in Widget B for the main Widget A. Our samples show how you can activate multiple widgets, including a settings widget from our settings icon, but we don't really have guidance on widget to widget communication (within the same app) as you can use your favorite method (MVVM with shared data model, or otherwise).

If you look at our settings sample, you will see how to perform the whole activation flow piece (from the settings button). If you look at our advanced sample(s), you'll see how to activate Widget B from Widget A.

Thanks, Ben

Whenever I try to set the new value of XboxGameBarWidget.RequestedTheme an exception with message "The application called an interface that was marshalled for a different thread. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8001010E (RPC_E_WRONG_THREAD))" is throwed. I tried run an action using the Window.Current.Dispatcher and CoreApplication.MainView.CoreWindow.Dispatcher but without success. So, how can I do it?

I'm going to resolve this question. Please reactivate if your question wasn't answered or you still have issues. Thanks!

Hi Jurko,

I circled back with the team and we discussed this. We performed a lot of user experience adjustments in the 2010 release last year, and one of those was ensuring all widgets (including our inbox ones) had a opaque backplate while in foreground (with the exception that some widgets will show transparency during settings preview modes). However, based on your feedback and understanding the value of positioning your widget with transparency, we're going to look at allowing this again in 2104 (april release). I did a quick test just turning off our backplate in WinGForeground mode, but it will regress some of the 3rd party widgets in the store (they rely on that solid backplate in foreground). Due to this, we'll likely introduce a manifest flag you can specify that says "let me control opacity in foreground"... or something to that affect.

Sorry for this regression to your scenario and we'll try to have a solution as soon as possible. We unfortunately cannot fix for 2102 (Feb) as we're already in final testing for that release.

Advanced sample URI activation strings had incorrect ids. Appears CS and CPP identities were swapped. Also fixed some COM/MBM entries in the app manifests.

Correct we only support v141 or higher.

Advanced sample URI activation strings had incorrect ids. Appears CS and CPP identities were swapped. Also fixed some COM/MBM entries in the app manifests.

cppwinrt uses this for broader coverage. it may be that we don't actually support v140 though:

    <PlatformToolset>v140</PlatformToolset>
    <PlatformToolset Condition="'$(VisualStudioVersion)' == '15.0'">v141</PlatformToolset>
    <PlatformToolset Condition="'$(VisualStudioVersion)' == '16.0'">v142</PlatformToolset>

I wasn't able to find a good place to post this but here seemed the most appropriate. I have developed a UWP game using Xamarin.Forms. It doesn't use DirectX/OpenGL etc. It is a game though. How can I ensure game bar automatically detects this app as a game without the user needing to manually flag it for gamebar?

Perfect, thank you! :) Its not currently available on stores but it is good to know that is the identification mechanism (I thought there may be a method for my app itself to identify itself as a game to game bar).

I wasn't able to find a good place to post this but here seemed the most appropriate. I have developed a UWP game using Xamarin.Forms. It doesn't use DirectX/OpenGL etc. It is a game though. How can I ensure game bar automatically detects this app as a game without the user needing to manually flag it for gamebar?

Found a couple of typos/misspellings while reading through.

Thanks!

Advanced sample URI activation strings had incorrect ids. Appears CS and CPP identities were swapped. Also fixed some COM/MBM entries in the app manifests.

Hi Ben,

Thank you for looking into this, let me know if you need any additional information, I'd even be happy to hop on a call with you and give you a walk through of how this issue affects our product on the Game Bar. My business email is jurko@centerpointgaming.com

Best, Jurko

Hi chanallenk,

Sorry for the delayed response. Folks have been away for Holidays. We did identify an issue recently that is likely what you're seeing here. We are working on resolving it. We're hitting some data limits when saving data to the app's (Game Bar) local storage. This is hit when users add a certain number of widgets to Game Bar, as each widget has data stored about it: size, position, favorite, etc.

The reason you only see it sometimes might be due to some debounce logic we have when saving data. On close, we trigger a check to save data, but if it's still in the debounce period we'll wait. You should see the write attempt a few seconds later.

Regardless, we're working on addressing the issue.

Thanks, Ben

Hi jurkog,

Thank you for reporting. We'll investigate and see what's happening.

Thanks, Ben

Describe the bug As of the late October update, one can't have a fully transparent widget while the Game Bar is open.

To Reproduce Launch any widget (WidgetAdvSampleCS for example) and try to make it transparent while the Game Bar is open. You can't do it. RequestedOpacity doesn't change unless you close the Game bar and have the widget pinned.

Expected behavior If you make the Background property of the page (MainPage.xaml) and the AppManifest's VisualElements.BackgroundColor property equal to "transparent", it should be transparent.

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• OS version: [use winver e.g. Windows 10 20H2
• Game Bar version 5.420.11102.0
• SDK version: 5.3.200605002

Additional context This used to work up until the Game Bar update in late October.

Hi. In order to ensure you are on the right thread you have to use a dispatcher that is associated with your widget UI thread. Likely, by using Window.Current.Dispatcher and CoreApplication.MainView.CoreWindow.Dispatcher it is the wrong dispatcher. In our sample code we use an element in the view's dispatcher, something like this:
co_await resume_foreground(RequestedThemeTextBlock().Dispatcher());

You could also save the dispatcher off when your widget instance is activated in OnActivated, so that way you know you are using the right dispatcher. Let me know if you still aren't able to get it to work.