Developing with Visual Studio

Preparing your development environment for Arm64 and Arm64EC

Visual Studio makes it easy to get started developing apps for Universal Windows Platform (UWP). You’ll find resources to help you move applications built using the .NET framework to UWP.

Compiling apps for Windows on Snapdragon® platforms is even easier with support for Arm64EC (“Emulation Compatible”) in Windows 11. To start building Win32 apps as Arm64EC, follow these steps to add the Arm64EC platform to Visual Studio.

  1. In the Visual Studio Installer, add the Arm64EC tools by searching under Individual components and selecting the MSVC vXYZ - VS 2022 C++ Arm64EC build tools checkbox, currently marked as experimental.

  2. With the tools and SDK installed, create a new C++ project or open an existing one.
  3. To add the Arm64EC platform:
    • In the Build menu, select Configuration Manager.
    • In the Active solution platform box, select <New…> to create a new platform.
    • Select Arm64EC, Copy settings from x64, and check the Create new project platforms checkbox.

    Parts of the app can remain x64 if needed, but to see the best performance for a Windows 11 app running on the Windows on Snapdragon platform, its best to build as much of the code as possible for Arm64EC. For any external dependencies, ensure that your project links against the x64 or Arm64EC versions of those projects.

  4. With the new solution platform in place, select Build in Visual Studio to start building Arm64EC binaries.

If you run into any issues or have any questions, please put your information in our Developer Inquiry Form at the bottom of our landing page.


Snapdragon is a product of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries.