[eco]

Microsoft added a setting in Windows 10 to switch the code page over to utf-8 and then in Windows 11 they made it on by default. Individual applications can turn it on for themselves, so they don't need to rely on the system setting being checked.

I haven't tried it yet but with that you can just use the -A variants of the winapi with utf-8 strings. No conversion necessary.

[adzm]

Do you have any references about it being enabled by default in Windows 11? I've seen conflicting reports and often seems to vary depending on the system locale whether it gets enabled or disabled by default.