Top 10 Microsoft Open‑Source Projects on GitHub (by Stars)

In this article we present the ten Microsoft‑developed and maintained open‑source repositories that have the highest number of GitHub stars (data as of May 9 2022), along with key statistics and short official descriptions.

10. Cascadia Code

Primary language: Python (100%)

Stars: 19.9k

Watching: 237

Forks: 668

Description: Cascadia is a fun new coding font bundled with Windows Terminal and now the default font for Visual Studio.

Repository: https://github.com/microsoft/cascadia-code

9. Calculator

Primary language: C++ (71.9%)

Stars: 24.4k

Watching: 561

Forks: 4.4k

Description: The Windows Calculator app, written in C++ and C#, offers standard, scientific, and programmer modes plus unit and currency converters.

Repository: https://github.com/microsoft/calculator

8. Monaco Editor

Primary language: JavaScript (81.1%)

Stars: 29.3k

Watching: 505

Forks: 2.8k

Description: Monaco Editor is generated from VS Code source; the repo contains packaging scripts and the monaco-editor npm module, not the editor’s source code itself.

Repository: https://github.com/microsoft/monaco-editor

7. ML-For-Beginners

Primary platform: Jupyter Notebook (99.4%)

Stars: 35.5k

Watching: 683

Forks: 6.9k

Description: A 12‑week, 26‑lesson beginner machine‑learning curriculum from Microsoft, featuring quizzes, solutions, and project‑based learning.

Repository: https://github.com/microsoft/ML-For-Beginners

6. Playwright

Primary language: TypeScript (85.1%)

Stars: 37.4k

Watching: 329

Forks: 1.7k

Description: Playwright is a web‑testing and automation framework that provides a single API to test Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit across browsers.

Repository: https://github.com/microsoft/playwright

5. Web-Dev-For-Beginners

Primary language: JavaScript (78.5%)

Stars: 48.2k

Watching: 2.4k

Forks: 7k

Description: A 12‑week, 24‑lesson course covering JavaScript, CSS, and HTML fundamentals, with quizzes, solutions, and project‑based exercises.

Repository: https://github.com/microsoft/Web-Dev-For-Beginners

4. PowerToys

Primary language: C# (53.6%)

Stars: 72.8k

Watching: 1k

Forks: 4.1k

Description: Microsoft PowerToys are Windows utilities that let power users tweak and streamline their Windows experience to boost productivity.

Repository: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys

3. TypeScript

Primary language: TypeScript (100%)

Stars: 80.4k

Watching: 2.1k

Forks: 10.5k

Description: TypeScript adds optional static typing to JavaScript, enabling large‑scale applications across browsers, hosts, and operating systems, and compiles to standard JavaScript.

Repository: https://github.com/microsoft/TypeScript

2. Terminal

Primary language: C++ (94.6%)

Stars: 82.9k

Watching: 1.3k

Forks: 7.3k

Description: This repository contains the source code for Windows Terminal, Windows Terminal Preview, the Windows console host, shared components, ColorTool, and example projects demonstrating the Windows Console API.

Repository: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal

1. Visual Studio Code

Primary language: TypeScript (93.8%)

Stars: 131k

Watching: 3.1k

Forks: 22.3k

Description: Visual Studio Code combines a lightweight code editor with powerful development features such as debugging, extensibility, and integration with existing tools, and receives monthly updates.

Repository: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode

The ten projects above represent Microsoft’s most popular open‑source contributions on GitHub; readers are invited to share whether the list matches their expectations or if any notable projects are missing.