microsoft / microsoft/WindowsAppSDK
Significant performance overhead in WinRT API calls (ApplicationData, Package.Current)
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Since Feb 22, 2026.
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Description
Describe the bug
I am seeing unexpected latency when calling standard WinRT APIs within a WPF application (Desktop Bridge/MSIX) using Windows App SDK 1.8.
Environment:
CPU: 12th Gen Intel i9
RAM: 64GB
Framework: Microsoft.WindowsAppRuntime 1.8
Observations:
Using both a profiler and Stopwatch verification, I’ve found that calls to ApplicationData.Current.LocalCacheFolder and ApplicationData.Current.GetPublisherCacheFolder consistently take ~25ms to execute.
Furthermore, these results do not appear to be cached internally; calling them multiple times results in the same 25ms delay per call. Other APIs show similar overhead:
Package.Current.InstalledLocation: ~15ms
ApiInformation.IsTypePresent: ~15ms
On high-end hardware, 15–25ms for a property access is extremely high. Is this expected behavior?
Steps to reproduce the bug
Just call any of those method and measure them with stopwatch
Expected behavior
No response
Screenshots
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NuGet package version
None
Packaging type
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Windows version
No response
IDE
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Additional context
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