WebView2.au3 — Native Microsoft Edge WebView2 UDF for AutoIt

[mLipok]

Hi everyone,

I’d like to share WebView2.au3, a native AutoIt UDF for embedding Microsoft Edge WebView2 in AutoIt GUI applications.

The UDF talks to the Win32 WebView2 COM interfaces directly from AutoIt. It does not require a C#/.NET bridge, a registered ActiveX control, a WebDriver executable, or a separate browser automation server.

What it can do

• Run with x86 or x64 AutoIt using the matching WebView2Loader.dll.
• Host multiple WebView2 instances and manage application-level tabs.
• Navigate to URLs or HTML content, execute JavaScript, and exchange messages between AutoIt and the page.
• Handle navigation events, title changes and new-window requests.
• Locate and interact with DOM elements using CSS selectors, XPath and other locator strategies.
• Wait for elements or script conditions, work with forms and tables, and access local or session storage.
• Capture screenshots and export PDF or MHTML to files or in-memory data.
• Use DevTools and selected Chrome DevTools Protocol features.
• Check the installed WebView2 Runtime and obtain diagnostic information through @error, @extended and configurable logging.

For users of the standard AutoIt IE.au3 UDF

The project includes IE.au3-style migration helpers for common tasks involving documents, forms, elements, links, images, tables and frames. They are intended to make existing AutoIt code easier to adapt to WebView2. These helpers operate on the modern Chromium-based WebView2 control; they do not create Internet Explorer COM objects or reproduce every behavior of the Internet Explorer engine. The repository documents the available mappings and differences.

Requirements

• Windows with a compatible Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime;
• AutoIt 3.3.18.0 or newer recommended;
• a WebView2Loader.dll matching the AutoIt process architecture.

The source code, installation instructions, API reference, examples and known limitations are here:

https://github.com/mlipok/WebView2.au3-NativeAutoIt3-UDF

Origins and acknowledgements

This project grew out of the AutoIt Forum discussion about embedding WebView2, which I started in 2020.

LarsJ demonstrated the native AutoIt techniques that form the technical foundation: loading WebView2Loader.dll, using COM interfaces through ObjCreateInterface(), defining interface tags and handling callbacks. Related callback and ObjectFromTag research by trancexx also informed the implementation.

Dan Pollak (Danp2) and au3WebDriver inspired selected API, DOM automation and diagnostic patterns. Examples by Ioa747 from NetWebView2Lib provided the basis for a separately credited set of example adaptations. The migration layer also draws on the familiar conventions of AutoIt’s standard IE.au3 UDF.

I develop and maintain the current native WebView2 UDF as mLipok. Thank you to these authors and the other AutoIt community contributors. Detailed attribution and third-party licenses are recorded in the repository’s NOTICE.md.

Project status and support

This is an early release. Static checks and selected x86/x64 runtime tests have been completed, but not every example or host application has been verified interactively. Please review the known limitations before using a feature in production.

I welcome questions, suggestions, bug reports and examples of how you use the UDF. For a bug report, please include a minimal reproducing script, your AutoIt version and architecture, WebView2 Runtime version, and any @error, @extended or diagnostic output.

 

EDIT 1:
AI assistance: Parts of this UDF, its examples and documentation were developed with the assistance of ChatGPT Codex. The project is released under the MIT License; see the repository for the license terms.

Edited October 29 by mLipok