Mobilize’s Silverlight bridge lets developers port their apps to Windows 10

Microsoft today announced the availability of a technology preview of a tool that developers can use to convert Windows Phone Silverlight 8.x apps to Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps. UWP is a big deal because it can allow apps to run on any device running Windows 10, from a Raspberry Pi to a HoloLens.

The bridge tool comes not from Microsoft but Mobilize.NET, an independent company run by Tom Button, a longtime corporate vice president at Microsoft. The tool is easy to use; it’s an extension to Microsoft’s Visual Studio software. You can download it here.

Once the extension is installed, all you have to do is right-click on your app from the Solution Explorer and click “Convert to UWP,” Microsoft program manager Clint Rutkas wrote in a blog post today.

At the Build developer conference back in May, Microsoft promised developers that a bridge would become available for Silverlight apps to become UWP apps. Now it’s here, to ensure that older apps can live on.