microsoft / microsoft/WindowsAppSDK

WCR: New privacy settings UI is unclear, has potential localization issues

Open
#5,606 1 comment 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

area-WCR documentation
Dominant language
C++
Stars
4.7k
Forks
471
Avg merge
3d 13h
Merged PRs (30d)
28

Description

### Describe the bug

The new "Text and image generation" settings UI in Privacy & Security has usability and localization concerns:

1. Unclear toggle hierarchy: The relationship between the global "Text and image generation" toggle and the app-level "Let apps use Text and image generation" toggle is confusing. It's unclear what the app-level toggle's effective state is when the global toggle is already enabled.

I thought toggling this would allow me to enable AI API access for all apps with and without identity, but that was not the case. I believe the intent of this top-level option in other areas (e.g., Pictures library access) was to give users a master switch to cover apps _without identity_.

2. Improper resource string reuse: The text "Text and image generation" appears to be reused as a substring across multiple UI elements, leading to inconsistent capitalization. In addition to the grammar being wrong in en-US, this pattern will likely cause localization issues in languages with different grammatical constructs where the same phrase may need different forms depending on context.

### Steps to reproduce the bug

1. Install Windows Insider build 26200.5670 or higher (dev channel)
2. Open Settings and go to Privacy & security > Text and image generation
3. Observe UI (screenshot below)

### Expected behavior

_No response_

### Screenshots

Image

### NuGet package version

Windows App SDK 1.8 Experimental 4: 1.8.250702007-experimental4

### Packaging type

Packaged (MSIX)

### Windows version

Insider Build (xxxxx)

### IDE

Visual Studio 2022-preview

### Additional context

Feedback Hub item: https://aka.ms/AAwzf3r

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reproducing the UI at Settings > Privacy & security > Text and image generation on the specified Insider build, then inspect the global and app-level toggle behavior and the reused resource text. Done means the toggle hierarchy is unambiguous and the labels use context-appropriate strings that can be localized correctly.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp
Domain
design, desktop, internationalization
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.