On Windows 10 and 11, the Evergreen WebView2 Runtime is often already installed as part of the OS or alongside Microsoft Edge.
It is pre-installed on Windows 11 and recent versions of Windows 10. Microsoft Learn 🛠️ Implementation Steps 1. Set Up the Environment evergreen webview2
Your company sells a React/Vue/Blazor dashboard. Your “desktop app” is literally a 2MB wrapper that hosts the WebView2 and adds native taskbar integration, drag-and-drop for local files, and printing. Because you use Evergreen, your users never experience an “out-of-date browser” warning. It’s always fresh. On Windows 10 and 11, the Evergreen WebView2
Because the Evergreen runtime is system-wide, Windows can share binary pages across multiple processes. If the user runs your WPF app, a WinUI 3 app, and a PowerShell WebView2 script simultaneously, they all share the same Chromium binaries in RAM, reducing overhead dramatically. Set Up the Environment Your company sells a
Problem: If your app relies on a specific behavior that changes in a new Chromium version (e.g., a removed API or a rendering bug fix), Evergreen will update and potentially break your app. Solution: You can use the CoreWebView2EnvironmentOptions.TargetCompatibleBrowserVersion to request a specific version. However, if the runtime updates past your target, you get a VersionMismatch error. For critical industries (medical devices, avionics), use Fixed Version.
Microsoft handles the updates for the underlying Chromium engine.