I was developing uwp apps for the past few years, now moving to winui3. It is my first project. I am unable to find the designer view for the XAML files. Is it not available in WinUI3? or something else?
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Unforturnately Designer View is not supported for now in WinUI3 for XAML files. You can track its status on Github:

demonplus
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12Microsoft developers like us are pathetic. MS recommended us to go to WinUI3 from UWP. But even basic things are missing there. – Mg Bhadurudeen Dec 10 '21 at 14:11
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4@MgBhadurudeen Agree, things like that are really disappointing – demonplus Dec 10 '21 at 17:16
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1@MgBhadurudeen See [here](https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/issues/5917#issuecomment-1028626378) for more details. Seems like adding the XAML designer is no easy task. – jyl Feb 05 '22 at 16:31
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2It seems like nothing is easy in WinUI and C++/WinRT. UWP was amazing to use in many respects. I'm not getting the same feeling from the 'next generation'. – Gavin Williams Mar 21 '22 at 02:06
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4WinUI 3 still has no XAML designer (July 2022). What a glaring omission from a framework they seem so eager to get developers adopting. – Reece Jul 17 '22 at 01:16
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4Baffling decision by MS. I was all set to start looking at WinUI for a new app. No visual designer in Visual Studio? Absolutely useless. It's 2022, I'm not hand-crafting UI code guys, get real. – Swordblaster Oct 19 '22 at 05:44
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1So, just found this (March 2023) as I was going to port from UWP, but no designer is pathetic and makes it a non starter. I'll find something else. @Swordblaster 's last sentence is bang on the money. We had better tools in the original Visual Basic. – Ian Bland Apr 01 '23 at 22:34