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MIT - MIT Licensewindows-rs lets you call Windows APIs - past, present, and future - directly from Rust. It is not
a single crate but a family of them, from low-level API access to high-level declarative UI. This
page helps you find the right crate for the job; each crate's own documentation then covers how to
use it, with examples.
Most of these crates are small and focused - string types, error handling, the registry,
collections, and so on - and you depend only on what you actually use. For broad, exploratory access
to the entire Windows API surface, the windows and
windows-sys crates project everything past, present, and future, gated
behind per-namespace features.
For most projects, prefer the focused crates below, and generate a minimal, project-specific binding
with windows-bindgen for any additional APIs you need.
Start with what you are trying to do and add the smallest crate that covers it. Follow the link for usage and examples.
| If you need | Use |
|---|---|
Windows error handling (HRESULT, Error, Result) |
windows-result |
Windows string types and macros (HSTRING, PCWSTR, h!, w!, s!) |
windows-strings |
COM/WinRT type support (IUnknown, the Interface trait, cast, GUID) |
windows-core |
| To declare or implement a COM/WinRT interface |
windows-core (#[interface] / #[implement]) |
Stock WinRT collections (IVector, IMap) |
windows-collections |
WinRT values (IReference<T>, TimeSpan, DateTime) |
windows-reference, windows-time |
| Graphics math (vectors, matrices) | windows-numerics |
| WinRT async bridged to Rust futures | windows-future |
| The Win32 thread pool | windows-threading |
| The Windows registry | windows-registry |
| To author a Windows service | windows-services |
| The OS version at runtime | windows-version |
To link C-style functions without import libs (link!, raw-dylib) |
windows-link |
| To generate your own focused bindings | windows-bindgen |
| A declarative WinUI 3 UI, 2D graphics, a WebView, or a window | windows-reactor, windows-canvas, windows-webview, windows-window |
The full categorized index follows. Each crate has one page under crates/ covering both
usage and internals - how the crate is built and maintained (the tool_bindings / tool_reactor /
tool_package codegen pipeline, generated files, and conventions). Each crate's own readme.md is
the user-facing introduction with a quick example, and the per-crate page links to it. Item-level
API reference is the generated rustdoc on docs.rs, linked from every page.
| Crate | Description |
|---|---|
| windows-core | Fundamental COM and Windows type support, including the #[interface] / #[implement] authoring macros. |
| windows-result | Windows error handling and propagation. |
| windows-strings | Windows string interop types and macros. |
The #[interface] and #[implement] macros are part of windows-core, split into the
windows-interface and
windows-implement crates only because Rust requires procedural macros
to live in a dedicated proc-macro crate.
| Crate | Description |
|---|---|
| windows-numerics | Graphics math types (vectors and matrices). |
| windows-collections | Stock WinRT collection types. |
| windows-reference | Stock IReference<T> implementation. |
| windows-time | WinRT TimeSpan and DateTime. |
| Crate | Description |
|---|---|
| windows-future | WinRT async bridged to Rust futures. |
| windows-threading | Safe wrapper over the Win32 thread pool. |
| Crate | Description |
|---|---|
| windows-registry | Safe Windows registry access. |
| windows-services | Author Windows services in Rust. |
| windows-version | Query the Windows version at runtime. |
These crates package functionality that is part of other crates but must ship separately.
windows-interface and windows-implement are part of windows-core (see
above); Rust requires their proc macros to live in a dedicated proc-macro crate.
| Crate | Description |
|---|---|
| windows-implement |
#[implement] proc macro for COM/WinRT - part of windows-core. |
| windows-interface |
#[interface] proc macro for COM interfaces - part of windows-core. |
| windows-link | Raw-dylib import support (link!). |
| Crate | Description |
|---|---|
| windows-reactor | Declarative UI library backed by WinUI 3. |
| windows-canvas | 2D graphics built on Direct2D. |
| windows-composition | Retained-mode visual layer built on the Windows composition engine. |
| windows-webview | Safe wrapper around the WebView2 browser control. |
| windows-window | Minimal window creation and message loop. |
| windows-animation | Wrapper around the Windows Animation Manager. |
| windows-reactor-setup | Windows App Runtime installer for reactor apps. |
| Crate | Description |
|---|---|
| windows-bindgen | Code generator for Windows metadata. |
| windows-clang | Generates RDL from C/C++ headers using libclang. |
| windows-metadata | Low-level ECMA-335 metadata library. |
| windows-rdl | RDL parser and ECMA-335 generator. |
| riddle | Windows metadata compiler. |
| cppwinrt | Bundles the C++/WinRT compiler. |
These crates project the entire Windows API surface. For new projects, prefer a focused binding generated with windows-bindgen, or compose the smaller crates above.
| Crate | Description |
|---|---|
| windows | Safer projection of C-style, COM, and WinRT APIs. |
| windows-sys | Zero-overhead raw bindings for C-style Windows APIs. |
