Forum Discussion
Custom AppInstaller UX
How to create a custom App Installer UX - MSIX | Microsoft Learn shows how to customize the desktop appinstaller UI, but the article contains a note that this feature has been temporarily disabled. I have validated that it is not currently working.
- Is there any information about plans to restore the feature?
- Is there more information on the schema so that we can understand what can be included, beyond the sample xml provided?
I can see where some companies creating their own packages might want to "brand" the installer to help end-users recognize that it is an IT supported app.
This works for me with AppInstaller 1.21.3133.0 and has for a while? It seems like even on Windows 10 this is active.
Checkout the MS Teams MSIX (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2196106) installer, they use the custom UX. I am using almost the same xml file in my app and it also shows the customized UX.The source of the Teams MSIX link is this page: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/new-teams-bulk-install-client#option-1b-download-and-install-new-teams-using-an-offline-installer
marvin_r Thanks for that. I'll have to do more investigation. That teams package does set the MaxTested field, so it is possible there is an undocumented requirement here.
Update. The xml file used for the MsixAppInstallerData.xml must be utf8 with without the bom. This is what was causing the AppInstaller to reject the file. I documented how I am using this in a blog post here: How to Brand your MSIX Custom UI Installation – Confessions of a Guru (tmurgent.com)
PS: The desktop AppInstaller program outputs information to the debug console port when it works. This issue was identified by using DebugView when bringing up the Desktop AppInstaller against the package which showed that it didn't like the XML. This trick will be useful for anyone having issues with the customized feature.
