Grant package identity by packaging with external ___location in Visual Studio

2025-05-22

For the motivations behind adding package identity, as well as the differences between building identity packages in Visual Studio and building them manually, see Overview.

This topic describes how to build and register an identity package by using Visual Studio. For info about building an identity package manually, see Grant package identity by packaging with external ___location manually.

These are the steps (which this topic describes in detail) to build and register an identity package by using Visual Studio:

Install Visual Studio components
Add a Packaging Project to your solution
Configure the Packaging Project for signing
Build and test the Packaging Project in Release Mode
Register the identity package in your installer
Optional steps

Install Visual Studio components

Creating an identity package in Visual Studio requires the Windows Application Packaging Project and the Package with External Location extension.

Install the Windows Application Packaging Project components as described in Required Visual Studio version and workload.

In Visual Studio, via the Extensions > Manage Extensions menu item, install the Package with External Location extension.

Add a Packaging Project to your solution

To add a Packaging Project to your solution with a Project Reference to your application project, see Set up the Windows Application Packaging Project in your solution.

Enable packaging with external ___location by right-clicking the Packaging Project in Solution Explorer, navigating to the External Location tab provided by the Package with External Location extension, enabling the Package with External Location option, and saving the changes.

Set the Package name and Publisher display name fields of the identity package by double-clicking Package.appxmanifest in the Packaging Project to open the visual manifest editor, navigating to the Packaging tab, and setting the Package name and Publisher display name fields to the desired values.

If you have a custom application manifest in your application project, then for info about synchronizing the values with the values from Package.appxmanifest, see Add identity metadata to your desktop application manifests. The Package with External Location extension uses App for the applicationId.

If you don't have a custom application manifest, then Visual Studio will produce the appropriate artifacts during the build process. .NET projects embed a manifest by default, which conflicts with the produced manifest artifacts. To resolve that, right-click the Project, open Properties, and in the Application tab under the Manifest section, change Embed manifest with default settings to Create application without a manifest.

Configure the Packaging Project for signing

Generate a certificate for signing by walking through the Publish > Create App Packages wizard shown in Create an app package using the packaging wizard.

On the first screen, ensure that Sideloading is selected, and Enable automatic updates is unchecked. On the second screen, create a self-signed certificate if necessary, then click the Trust button to trust it in the Local Machine Trusted People certificate store. On the final screen, set Generate app bundle to Never, and click Create to complete the signing configuration.

Build and test the Packaging Project in Release Mode

To avoid complications from Debug mode dependencies, set the Build configuration to Release mode, and build the Packaging Project.

Building the Packaging Project produces a PackageWithExternalLocation folder in the build output. That folder contains the MSIX file representing the identity package, as well as Install and Remove PowerShell scripts to register and unregister the generated identity package locally for testing.

The Install PowerShell script registers the generated identity package locally, and connects it with the ExternalLocation sibling folder for testing purposes. To test the application with identity, run the application executable from the ExternalLocation folder.

To associate identity with your application in production, you'll need to ship the generated identity package with your application, and register it in your installer.

Register the identity package in your installer

The last step to associate identity with your application is to register the identity package in your installer, and associate it with your application's installation directory.

The code listing below demonstrates registering the identity package by using the PackageManager.AddPackageByUriAsync method.

using Windows.Management.Deployment;

...

var externalUri = new Uri(externalLocation);
var packageUri = new Uri(packagePath);

var packageManager = new PackageManager();

var options = new AddPackageOptions();
options.ExternalLocationUri = externalUri;

await packageManager.AddPackageByUriAsync(packageUri, options);

Be aware of the following important details about this code:

Set externalLocation to the absolute path of your application's installation directory (without any executable names).
Set packagePath to the absolute path of the identity package produced in the previous step (with the file name).

For production-ready code in C# and C++, see Sample apps below. The samples also demonstrate how to unregister the identity package on uninstall.

Sample apps

For fully functional C# and C++ apps that demonstrate how to register an identity package, see the PackageWithExternalLocation samples.

Optional steps

Localization

Some features that understand package identity might result in strings from your identity package manifest being displayed in the Windows OS. For example:

An application that uses camera, microphone, or ___location APIs will have a dedicated control toggle in Windows Privacy Settings along with a brokered consent prompt that users can use to grant or deny access to those sensitive resources.
An application that registers a share target will show up in the share dialog.

To localize the strings in the identity package manifest, see Localize the manifest.

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