This project used to be great...

[Sjoerd Wouters (sjoerdev)]

am i the only one that is really disapointed with the direction the project has gone since the develution takeover?

[David Hervieux (dhervieux)]

You're not the only one who gets nervous when a company gets involved, so fair enough to say it out loud. But I'd rather fix real problems than argue about a feeling, so help me out: what specifically got worse for you since we took over?

[Sjoerd Wouters (sjoerdev)]

the user interface is laggy and alot less polished then it used to be, i think switching to avalonia was a huge mistake.

[Sjoerd Wouters (sjoerdev)]

and im not the only one that feels this way, as can be clearly seen by sorting the github discussions by most activity:

[David Hervieux (dhervieux)]

You're right, you're not the only one, and I'm not going to pretend the migration wasn't a big change or that plenty of people preferred the old UI. That part's real and I see it. But we're not going back to WinUI, and that won't flip based on thread activity, the move was made for [cross-platform + long-term maintainability].

Here's the honest difference between feedback that helps and feedback that doesn't, with a real example. When the new icon landed we got a wave of "the icon is bad." That went nowhere, because there's nothing to act on. But some people took the time to explain what specifically felt off, and that feedback is exactly what let us rework it to fit our design guidelines. Same subject, completely different outcome.

And a lot is happening under the hood that has nothing to do with venting. We've done serious performance work on the winget side, PinGet is a full rewrite, and we've reported a stack of issues directly to Microsoft. The project is getting more investment now, not less.

So if the new UI is slower, missing something, or broke a workflow you relied on, that's exactly what I want and I'll chase it down. "Bring back the old one" I can't act on.

[thekovic]

Sorry, what did you say the point of switching to AvaloniaUI over WinUI was? Cross-platform support? Are you hoping to make a Linux version one day? Linux users aren't going to use your product, they already have GUI software for package management from their desktop environments - apps like KDE Discover, Software on GNOME, and others. I'm sorry but I can't see the use case. UnigetUI is a product that fills a niche that's missing only on Windows systems.

[Zerebos (zerebos)]

You're not the only one just based on the other feedback posted in Discussions and Issues alone. For me, the new UI is incredibly slow, unintuitive, and has poor accessibility--the contrast and spacing is just not as good and it's much harder to visually scan among other issues. I personally reverted to version 2026.2.1 and probably won't upgrade for a long time if ever. The updates have felt like churn for the sake of churn but with no real benefits. The whole debacle has left me using UniGetUI a lot less than before in general out of frustration and disappointment.

[David Hervieux (dhervieux)]

Zerebos (@zerebos) I know I'm asking a lot, but could you post some screenshot with must fix and maybe some 2026.1 and 2026.2 compare. This will help us a lot. As a Uniget UI user myself, I'm not seeing the issue, this does not mean it's not there. We are working on improving the performance as well.

Regards

[Sjoerd Wouters (sjoerdev)]

David Hervieux (@dhervieux) you asked me what specifically is worse. i think its pretty obvious. the entire user interface is slower and less polished. i genuinly think the best think you can do to safe this project is to revert to an older version with the wpfui interface and go from there. i think that would be the best thing you can do for the project in the long term.

[SynapseScribe]

i don't find it slower, the ui is very fast, and i have been using unigetui since very long time ago. it's even faster. you might want to compare them side by side

[David Hervieux (dhervieux)]

SynapseScribe Thanks a lot for this, really appreciate it. It matches what I'm seeing on my end too. That said, I don't want to wave off the people who did report slowdowns, I'm sure there are environments and use cases where it's still not great, and those reports are exactly what we need to track them down and fix them. Our main developer has landed more performance improvements since, and they'll be in the next update coming soon. He also tweaked the empty state images, the Sysadminotaur strips were coming across as too childish for some, so we toned them down. And we finally managed to enable native AOT: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/deploying/native-aot/?tabs=windows%2Cnet8

Regards

[Biyakuga Higashiri (Biyakuga)]

SynapseScribe Thanks a lot for this, really appreciate it. It matches what I'm seeing on my end too. That said, I don't want to wave off the people who did report slowdowns, I'm sure there are environments and use cases where it's still not great, and those reports are exactly what we need to track them down and fix them. Our main developer has landed more performance improvements since, and they'll be in the next update coming soon. He also tweaked the empty state images, the Sysadminotaur strips were coming across as too childish for some, so we toned them down. And we finally managed to enable native AOT: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/deploying/native-aot/?tabs=windows%2Cnet8

Regards

I'm not trying to insult your work I'm sharing this because I think UniGetUI has a lot of potential, and I'd like to see the new interface reach the same level of polish as the rest of the application.

My biggest concern is that the new UI feels visually inconsistent with Windows 11 and Microsoft's Fluent Design language.

From the screenshot, you can see why many users appreciate Microsoft's Fluent Design. It has a clean, calm, and polished appearance that blends naturally with Windows 11. The new interface moves away from that aesthetic in several ways:

• The bluish background doesn't work well with the Mica effect and feels disconnected from the rest of the Windows 11 visual style.
• The new cartoon-style illustrations look out of place. They don't seem to follow Fluent Design guidelines and instead resemble artwork from much older Microsoft products.
• The hamburger menu overlays the content instead of pushing the interface aside, which makes the interaction feel less refined. It also uses a different background color from the main content, making it feel visually disconnected rather than part of a unified interface. Adding smooth animations such as an animated selection indicator when switching between navigation items would also make the navigation feel much more polished and aligned with the Fluent Design experience.
• Splitting the command bar into two separate areas hurts usability. I don't understand the UX rationale behind moving view and sorting controls to the bottom-right. Microsoft's Fluent Design guidance generally recommends keeping the primary command bar together and, when space is limited, moving less frequently used actions into an overflow ("...") menu rather than splitting commands across different locations especially when people already used to the old interface and memorized location of items and menus, you did the same with login/user icon.

Overall, I think the previous design felt more cohesive and aligned with Windows 11. The new version introduces visual elements and interaction patterns that don't match the rest of the operating system, making the application feel less polished and consistent.

These are, of course, my personal opinions, but I hope you'll consider them. I believe bringing the UI closer to Fluent Design principles would significantly improve the overall user experience.

P.S
Another issue is the overall spacing and layout. Several elements appear to have been moved simply for the sake of changing the interface rather than to improve usability. For example, the account/profile icon belongs in the title bar, which is where Windows 11 users naturally expect to find it. Moving it elsewhere breaks consistency with the platform without providing a clear UX benefit.

More generally, I would encourage you to compare the new design against Microsoft's first-party Windows 11 applications, such as Settings, Microsoft Store, Photos, or Notepad. They consistently follow the same Fluent Design principles, with careful attention to spacing, alignment, visual hierarchy, animations, and control placement. Those small details are what make an application feel polished and native to Windows 11. I think UniGetUI would benefit from following those patterns more closely instead of introducing custom layouts where there isn't a strong usability reason to do so.

[Jared H-Saul L. (J-HS-L)]

Biyakuga Higashiri (@Biyakuga) You are using the latest version, presumably? I recently reverted from 3.3.7 to it (though there's another now, and for some reason I haven't received an update notification for it?!) & noticed it's now much more akin to Martin's style, and the WinUI tooling. It's still far from polished; features flat out don't work in some areas, which is a big no-no; they should be fenced off.

[Gabriel Dufresne (GabrielDuf)]

Biyakuga Higashiri (@Biyakuga),
A few of the points you mentioned have already been addressed in the latest release (2026.2.4):

• Illustrations: We've replaced them with a more neutral set, and you can now disable them entirely from User Interface Preferences if you prefer a cleaner look.
• Navigation pane: Since users had different preferences (some preferred the slide-in navigation while others preferred the pinned one), we've added a setting in User Interface Preferences to switch between the two. There's also an Automatic mode that behaves like the previous WinUI implementation: pinned on larger windows and slide-in on smaller ones.

Regarding the account/profile button, we agree it's worth revisiting. We'll look into moving it back to the title bar for a future release.

As for the rest, we'll see what we can improve as we keep working on the new UI.
Thanks for the detailed feedback.

[Roger Jakobsson (rogerjak)]

WTF is up with changing icons/images/behavior every release?

[Gabriel Dufresne (GabrielDuf)]

For the icons and images, we switched to the current ones based on user feedback. our original implementation wasn't well received.
As for the behavior you say changed, you'll need to be more specific. The app behaves pretty much the same as it always has.