Introduction

The Meziantou.Framework.Win32.* packages give .NET applications access to Windows features that the base class library does not cover. Each package wraps one Windows API behind a small, typed .NET API: you never declare a P/Invoke or a COM interface yourself.

The packages are Windows-only. They compile in any .NET project, but their methods only work when the application runs on Windows. See Getting started for how to call them from a cross-platform application.

What you can do with them

• Inspect and adjust the security context of a process: elevation, groups, integrity level and privileges. See Access tokens.
• Scan content for malware with the antimalware product installed on the machine before using it. See Antimalware scanning.
• Find the files that changed on a volume without scanning it, from the NTFS change journal. See Change journal.
• Store passwords and tokens in the Windows Credential Manager, and ask the user for credentials. See Credential Manager.
• Let the user pick a folder with the modern Windows folder dialog. See Folder dialog.
• Manage a group of processes as a unit: terminate the child processes when the application exits, and limit their memory, CPU and IO. See Job objects.
• Store machine secrets in the Local Security Authority. See LSA private data.
• Tell whether a file was downloaded from the Internet, and mark the files you download. See Mark of the Web.
• Classify files as text, image, audio, video and so on, from their extension. See Perceived types.
• Show virtual files and folders whose content your application provides on demand. See Projected file system.
• Add documents to Recent Items and Jump Lists. See Recent documents.
• Find which processes lock a file, and close and restart them. See Restart Manager.

Packages

Each package is independent: install only the ones you need. WPF applications can also use the WPF package, which provides commands, markup extensions and converters.

Next steps

• Getting started: install a package and call it safely from an application that also runs on Linux or macOS.