I miss Objective-C, it’s just so darn readable (once you know what @ and [] do)

Missing reference to 2015/2016.

Oh, they've got a well-structured roadmap with milestones. Surely, this is will be a long-lasting bridge. And last commit was 3 years ago. And "This repository was archived by the owner on May 28, 2025. It is now read-only."

It's dead but still around. This is the stuff ripe for Jia Tan v4.0 to revive and backdoor.

Interesting, I never knew about this. I do remember that NeXT ported OPENSTEP to Windows NT as OPENSTEP Enterprise.

I miss Objective-C, it’s just so darn readable (once you know what @ and [] do)

I wholeheartedly agree. I had a great time in Objective-C.

Yes Objective-C is THE C with objects.

I do not understand why Microsoft stopped this effort.

Paired with Win32 is easier than C++.

I wholeheartedly agree. I had a great time in Objective-C.

Missing reference to 2015/2016.

It's dead but still around. This is the stuff ripe for Jia Tan v4.0 to revive and backdoor.

Interesting, I never knew about this. I do remember that NeXT ported OPENSTEP to Windows NT as OPENSTEP Enterprise.

Microsoft's timing was the worst. I think they announced this a year after Swift was already announced, but before Swift was open sourced. So Microsoft wouldn't be able to deal with things like Obj-C/Swift interop which iOS developers were already jumping onto. And Microsoft's Windows 8 mobile initiative was pretty clearly a flop by this point.

Frankly, this Obj-C effort needed to be done way earlier, starting with AppKit, like back when Microsoft was panicking that OS X 10.4 Tiger was going to kick Longhorn's butt. If these tools had already been proven useful before the dawn of the iPhone, Microsoft might have had a chance of riding the iOS wave.

I think a separate objective-c runtime was ported to windows by apple for itunes and later safari to work.

I still have WebObjects 4.5.2, but could not get hands on the YellowBox

Yes Objective-C is THE C with objects.

I do not understand why Microsoft stopped this effort.

Paired with Win32 is easier than C++.

I still have WebObjects 4.5.2, but could not get hands on the YellowBox

I think a separate objective-c runtime was ported to windows by apple for itunes and later safari to work.

If I recall correctly, iTunes was a Carbon application. They ported parts of the Carbon APIs to get it running on Windows.

There seem to be bunch of DLLs in iTunes and Safari with familiar names.

Would have been good if someone made bindings for them, it would have been interesting to see what MacOS like stuff could work there, even if it just python bindings.

There is also GNUStep.

There seem to be bunch of DLLs in iTunes and Safari with familiar names.

Would have been good if someone made bindings for them, it would have been interesting to see what MacOS like stuff could work there, even if it just python bindings.

If I recall correctly, iTunes was a Carbon application. They ported parts of the Carbon APIs to get it running on Windows.

QuickTime for Windows existed long before then, and Apple ported a bunch of the old Classic Mac Toolbox to Windows as part of that.

IIRC it was actually this Windows port of Toolbox that in some ways laid the foundation for Carbon - i.e. a port of the Toolbox API to what became Mac OS X.

I do remember it had its own font rendering which looked out of place on Windows.

QuickTime for Windows existed long before then, and Apple ported a bunch of the old Classic Mac Toolbox to Windows as part of that.

IIRC it was actually this Windows port of Toolbox that in some ways laid the foundation for Carbon - i.e. a port of the Toolbox API to what became Mac OS X.

Interesting stuff, I wish there was a way it would get open sourced one day.

Yes, this is correct.

I do remember it had its own font rendering which looked out of place on Windows.

Welcome to the Windows Bridge for iOS Project

The Windows Bridge for iOS (also referred to as WinObjC) is a Microsoft open-source project that provides an Objective-C development environment for Visual Studio and support for iOS APIs. The bridge allows you to create Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps that will run on many Windows devices by re-using your Objective-C code and iOS APIs alongside Windows 10 features like Cortana and Windows Notifications.

Build and Release Status

	Stable (master)	Pre-release (develop)
Build
GitHub Release		-
winobjc-tools
WinObjC.Language
WinObjC.Frameworks

Download and Installation

To use the bridge you'll need:

Windows 10, build 10586 or higher. Validate your version number here.
Visual Studio 2017 with Windows developer tools. Visual Studio 2017 Community is available for free here.

Ensure the following individual components are selected during installation. Selecting the Universal Windows Platform development workflow should give most of the below

NOTE: Please also install the Mobile development with .NET workflow option (Xamarin Tools) due to a bug in Nugetizer (See Issue 5026)
(Click to Expand)
- Visual Studio Core Editor
- Nuget Package Manager
- C# and Visual Basic Roslyn compilers
- Static analysis tools
- Windows 10 SDK (10.0.14393.0)
- Visual Studio C++ core features
- VC++ 2017 v141 toolset (x86, x64)
- Visual C++ compilers and libraries for ARM
- Visual C++ runtime for UWP
- Windows 10 SDK (10.0.10240.0)
- Windows 10 SDK (10.0.10586.0)
- MSBuild
- Windows Universal CRT SDK
- Standard Library Modules
- VC++ 2015.3 v140 toolset (x86,x64)
- Windows Universal C Runtime

To get started with an existing Xcode Project, you will also need:

Chocolatey, a package manager for windows. See how to install the latest version here
winobjc-tools, the command line tools for WinObjC. Run the below command from powershell (Admin) to get the latest version:

choco upgrade winobjc-tools

(more information about this command and its options can be found here. If you want to use develop packages add --pre to the command.)

Getting Started With the Bridge

Importing your Xcode Project

When using the bridge, the first thing you'll want to do is generate a Visual Studio solution from your Xcode project:

Open Windows PowerShell (type powershell in the Start Menu to find it) and navigate to your Xcode project directory using the cd command. Note: use the directory containing your .workspace or .xcodeproj folder.

  C:\> cd C:\MyProject

Run the vsimporter tool. This will generate the Visual Studio Solution:

  C:\MyProject> vsimporter.exe

Open the generated Visual Studio solution with the command:

  C:\MyProject> MyProject.sln

For more detailed step by step instructions on how to import a project, see the Quick Start Tutorial page of the wiki. For vsimporter options and known issues, check the Using vsimporter wiki page.

Building & Running the Samples

A great way to learn more about the bridge and its features is building and running the samples of the SDK, which contain many code examples. We recommend starting with the WOCCatalog sample app, which demonstrates an assortment of iOS and XAML UI controls:

Clone the repo.
Navigate to the samples/WOCCatalog directory of the bridge SDK
Double-click on the WOCCatalog-WinStore10.sln solution to open it in Visual Studio
In Visual Studio, right-click on the WOCCatalog (Universal Windows) project
Select Set as StartUp project
Use Ctrl-F5 to build and run the app

For more detailed step by step instructions, see the Quick Start Tutorial page of the wiki.

Resources & Documentation

The following resources will help you get started. For more information, check out:

Wiki, for documentation and tutorials
Development Roadmap, detailing our highest priorities
Website on Windows Dev Center, for evaluation virtual machines
Quick Start Challenge, for a quick hands-on introduction to the bridge
FAQ, with common questions and issues
The iOS Bridge Samples Repo, for sample apps and code using the bridge

Contributing

There are many ways to contribute to the Windows Bridge for iOS:

Submit bugs & issues and help us verify fixes as they are checked in.
Review source code changes.
Submit a bug fix or feature implementation via pull request.
Follow @WindowsDev on Twitter and join the discussion using the #WinObjC hashtag.
Engage with other users and developers on StackOverflow and tag your questions with WinObjC.

See our contribution guidance in the wiki for more details on how to contribute to the project.

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact opencode@microsoft.com with any additional questions or comments.

Advanced Installation for Contributors and Ninjas

Additional Visual Studio Components Needed for Contributors:

C# and Visual Basic
Visual Studio SDK
.NET Framework 4.6 targeting pack
C++ Profiling Tools

If you want to build the bridge from source instead, you'll also need to install Git LFS before cloning the repo. For more detailed instructions, see the Building From Source wiki page.

If you're having trouble downloading & installing the bridge, see the Known Issues section below and check our FAQ.

Privacy

See Microsoft's privacy statement for more information.

Roadmap

For details on our planned features and future direction sort the list of issues by milestone and refer to our roadmap.

Known Issues

Do not use the Download ZIP option via the "Clone or download" button at the top of the page. You will not be able to build the bridge using the resulting .zip file. See "I'm getting errors after downloading the bridge through the "Download ZIP" button on Github. What should I do?" for more information.