Dev Platform

Welcome to the Windows Phone Developer Feedback site

This forum focuses on the developer platform (APIs, runtimes, and controls) that you use to build great app experiences for Windows Phone. Additional WPDev forums are available using the links along the right of the page. Consumer features suggestions should be submitted to the Windows Phone Suggestion Box site (http://windowsphone.uservoice.com/).

Suggestions provided via the WPDev UserVoice forum will be reviewed and read by the Windows Phone developer platform team, providing feedback to help with planning ideas and to better understand how developers are using the development platform, and all suggestions will be considered.

Two important notes about this site: (a) List items (and item rankings) represent community interest in features, and does not represent an actual priority list for the product team; and (b) Suggestions made using this forum will be moderated if they do not actually represent a feature request.

How can we improve the Windows Phone dev platform?

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  1. SMS Access API

    Please, provide a way to backup the texts.
    Or, at least, provide a API access to the texts to allow developers to implement an application for SMS backing up.

    7,258 votes
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      323 comments  ·  Framework  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →

      With the WP8 release, the team did add the capability for consumers to have the device backup texts (which has been added within the WP8 OS), but the platform still doesn’t have an API to do this.

      As such, I’m marking this as ‘Under Review’. The team is aware of the ask and it is something that is being considered.

    • Extend the API to query phone volume and vibration settings, maybe even set them.

      Currently, when developing a alarm clock app, there is no way to tell if the user has his phone set to vibrate only, so a soundeffect set by the user is played even if he has set his phone to vibrate. I find this very confusing, even though the builtin alarm clock behaves the same way.
      This would also be good to have for games, so when you launch a game in a quiet environment not all heads turn the user's way :)

      1,676 votes
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        36 comments  ·  Framework  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
      • Allow 3rd party apps to publish to People hub / messaging

        It would be beneficial to allow other messenger apps and social apps to come on board and allow their updates to show up in the people hub and messages to show up in the integrated messaging system. This would be great for any 3rd party app that has any social or messaging means to be able to leverage that kind of interconnectivity, example another IM provider (ex: Yahoo), social network provider, even apps for forum postings.

        949 votes
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          14 comments  ·  Framework  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
        • Enable Databindable ApplicationBar (buttons and menuitems)

          Right now it's not easy to enable DataBinding on the ApplicationBar buttons and menuitems.

          - When created in Xaml there's no way to get a reference to them, should be different.
          - Should be easily bound to a command, same as for icon and text should be bindable.

          681 votes
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            10 comments  ·  Framework  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →

            Thank you for the suggestion and commentary. While we are not adding this capability in the 8.0 release, there are currently a variety of community projects out there (see the comments for some suggestions). Please know that this is also definitely on the consideration list for future Windows Phone releases.

            Keep those suggestions and votes coming!

          • Bluetooth 4/ Bluetooth Low Energy API support.

            Please add support for Bluetooth Low Energy and Bluetooth 4. This will allow the development of applications that can support existing standard accessories and solutions across platforms. iOS and Android supports BLE. The WP8 hardware supports Bluetooth 4, but the software on WP8 does not allow the use of BLE.

            502 votes
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              21 comments  ·  Framework  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
            • Please - allow readonly access to Call History and Text History

              For creating more contact centric views of contacts

              400 votes
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                17 comments  ·  Framework  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
              • WP7 should support Reflection.Emit for Mocking frameworks & Linq

                The lack of Reflection.Emit in WP7 stops developers from being able to properly test their frameworks. With no Reflection.Emit it is impossible to build a Mocking framework and actually test WP7.

                The lack of Reflection.Emit is also blocking the OData Client Library for WP7.

                241 votes
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                  7 comments  ·  Framework  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                • keyboard

                  Allow to developers create a custom keyboard. eg. choose letters and numbers together

                  217 votes
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                    7 comments  ·  Framework  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                  • ApplicationData.RoamingFolder

                    For vNext it would be really great to have ApplicationData.RoamingFolder supported. It can enable some really cool and also cross-device experiences.

                    http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/windows.storage.applicationdata.roamingfolder(v=win.10).aspx

                    118 votes
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                      1 comment  ·  Framework  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                    • SIP Stack

                      A business feature that would be really nice to have support for it the ability to tie into a VoIP network for voip phone calls... the most common architecture is the SIP (Session Initiation Protocol). So I would like the ability to configure a SIP client that ties into our VoIP PBX and phone system.. so my WP7 would basically become my desk phone (extension). The only way this would really work well is if it ran in the background like the phone's native phone functionality.

                      117 votes
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                        0 comments  ·  Framework  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                      • Integrate BackgroundAudioPlayer and XNA MediaLibrary

                        Allow the BackgroundAudioPlayer to play tracks from the MediaLibrary. Or allow applications that implement the XNA MediaPlayer class to run in the background.

                        108 votes
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                          3 comments  ·  Framework  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                        • Video Chooser Task

                          It would be good to have a Video Chooser Task that works in the same way as the PhotoChooserTask. The reason for this is for users to be able to do things like apply filters, add audio tracks, crop out a relevant section, etc... of a recorded video and saving it back to the MediaLibrary. I assume saving to the MediaLibrary will be part of the AR functionality in mango anyway?

                          108 votes
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                            9 comments  ·  Framework  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                          • Allows software products from the same Publisher, accessing IsolatedStorage

                            Want to have a feature. Allows software products from the same Publisher, accessing IsolatedStorage. And can communicate with each other. Start each other (optional), which can be expanded larger developers ideas and more powerful than iOS and Android system.

                            This can save storage space, unified data storage location.

                            Or another form. Developers can provide their main program with subroutine. Subroutines can be run separately. Main program can manage/run program. In this way, developers can provide independent extension to process the data.

                            Wish to consider this kind of system design.

                            PS: above I use the online translation feature.

                            102 votes
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                              2 comments  ·  Framework  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →

                              Thank you for the suggestion. We are not adding this capability in the 8.0 release, but know that it is high on the consideration list for future Windows Phone releases.

                              Note that today, publishers can use server side comms/services to accomplish this type of solution, but this is not yet possible for logic that occurs entirely on the device.

                              Keep those suggestions and votes coming!

                            • Allow apps to notify user via notification LED

                              When an email arrives, or when I got a missed call, OS notifies via the notification LED.
                              But third party apps don't have the ability to notify the user this way.

                              I realize that allowing raw control will compromise the UX. However, allowing the apps to let the OS know that there is an update, combined with a toast or a tile update would be useful.

                              For ex: when I update the tile, or fire a push notification, allowing to mark it as 'priority', so the OS can blink the light ? (then also need a way to cancel the…

                              66 votes
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                                3 comments  ·  Framework  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                              • Enable Toasts from Within Applications

                                The Toast UI metaphor is useful for showing transient messages to the user such as authentication failures or other other messages that do not require the user's immediate attention.

                                In the current ShellTile API, a toast will not be displayed if the current foreground application is the caller of the ShellToast.Show method. It would be great if this was changed so that we could present in-app toasts. We can then user the NavigateUri property to navigate the user to a different part of the app if necessary.

                                61 votes
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                                  1 comment  ·  Framework  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                                • Allow adding of downloaded videos to Media Library

                                  We are limited of saving the Images to the Media Library.
                                  It will be better if user can add the downloaded Audio , Video can add to the Media Library from the Isolated Storage.

                                  49 votes
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                                    2 comments  ·  Framework  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                                  • Task running in the background, or snap

                                    Single task is back
                                    Please support a task running in the background, or snap. And you can switch, similar to Win8.

                                    46 votes
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                                      0 comments  ·  Framework  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                                    • Provide a Share Extension to Share Links from IE

                                      In IE for Windows Phone, you have the ability to share a link to the current page you're on from an Application Menu Item. The options are as follows:

                                      Messaging
                                      E-Mail
                                      Social Networks.

                                      I would like the ability to easily share a link to another application. It would work in much the same way the Photo Hubs Extension works. You would see a 3rd party app that supports the Share Link extension. Clicking it would open the app at a specified task. Then, one of the query string parameters that's used to launch the task could just be the URL…

                                      45 votes
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                                        1 comment  ·  Framework  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                                      • Siri-like speech API for apps to contribute speech functionality

                                        If WP7 had a Siri-like speech recognition system, it would be great if apps could contribute their own functionality to the list of things recognized by the system speech engine. For example, if I write an app that can locate my friends, my app should be able to contribute the verb "locate" to the system-wide speech engine. Whenever the user says "phone, locate my friends" my app will be a candidate for being launched to perform the action.

                                        41 votes
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                                          2 comments  ·  Framework  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                                        • Low Latency Sound Effect support

                                          Needed to create pro level sequencers, synths and music creation related apps!

                                          39 votes
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                                            1 comment  ·  Framework  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
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