Update (2026): Coded UI is now fully gone, not just marked as old. The call made here back in 2019 held up. WinAppDriver is still the free, go-to start point most folks use, and it is what this whole blog and my course lean on. Fair note though: by 2026, its own upkeep has slowed a lot, so once you know the core ideas here, it is worth a look at newer tools like FlaUI too. The core skill here, how you call a driver with WebDriver style calls, moves with you no matter which tool you end up on.
WinAppDriver Vs. Coded UI is a pointless question to ask. Just use WinAppDriver if you're starting UI test automation of your Windows application from scratch. Yes, there will be support for Coded UI for a while, but ultimately it will be phased out.
The differences between WinAppDriver and Coded UI are given here.
You read it right, Microsoft's flagship test automation tool, the CodedUI is dead. Microsoft has started to announce it that it is deprecating Coded UI publicly as well. The C# and VB.Net Coded UI project types are now showing deprecated written right next to them. Various MSDN help articles state clearly that Coded UI won't be supported after Visual Studio 2019.
This is it, the end of the road for Coded UI, see the image below :'(
Proof that Microsoft Coded UI is deprecated
I came to notice this fact when I installed Visual Studio 2019 RC on my Windows 10 PC, in Feb/March 2019.
I've been using(or wresting with) Coded UI for a quite a few years now. I naturally thought what will be the next solution for UI test automation of Windows applications.
The Future of Windows Test Automation
The answer was right there alongside the death announcement of Coded UI. The new way to go is according to Microsoft, their free & open source WinAppDriver combined with Appium WebDriver.
Windows Application Driver a.k.a WinAppDriver will need Windows 10 (it also runs on Windows 11) to run tests. That too in developer mode. Automated functional testing of legacy Win32 applications will be possible on Windows 10 and 11. This includes testing WPF, WinForms, and UWP applications using WinAppDriver.
You'll need to install Node.js and WinAppDriver for this purpose. Microsoft .Net framework is needed to make it work.
You also must have developer mode enabled in Windows 10 to run WinAppDriver.
I will be publishing more tutorials about this topic in the future. Subscribe to my channel and stay tuned.
The WinAppDriver can be downloaded from the Git repository here.
A UI recorder is also available for helping you in identifying control properties.
Your scripts are going to communicate with the WinAppDriver using http. The UI automation code might be written in C# .Net or many other languages available.
The UI or test automation code can be placed on the same machine as the driver, or on a different machine.
Just in case you want to learn what Windows Application Driver, or WinAppDriver for short, is all about: I now have a full Udemy course on it, Windows Desktop Applications Test Automation in WinAppDriver (code CBP2026AU). It uses C# .Net and Visual Studio for all the steps shown. Don't worry, Microsoft moved away from a closed, paid tool that was not great to begin with. WinAppDriver is free and open source, code and all, up on GitHub for you to see. Just know that by 2026, its GitHub repo does not move as fast as it once did, so treat it as a solid base to learn from more than a tool that gets new work often.
The UI recorder that comes bundled with WinAppDriver is also pretty neat for finding controls and generating XPath to find them.
If you want it all in one place, my course above has it all.
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