I’ve been working in desktop automation for a few years now, mostly around .NET and WPF apps, and I’ve had a really solid experience with one tool in particular.
FlaUI is a Modern C# Framework for Windows UI Automation If you’re looking for free/Open Source Tools to Automate Desktop Apps (VB6, .NET, WPF), FlaUI is definitely worth trying. It’s a modern C# library that wraps the UI Automation APIs nicely and gives you a lot of control.
There’s no record-playback here, but if you’re comfortable coding in C#, it’s a powerful option. I switched to FlaUI after dropping a paid tool and haven’t looked back — especially great for regression tests using NUnit or MSTest.
One huge plus: it works on Windows 7 too, as long as you’ve got .NET 4.6 or higher. So even for older systems, FlaUI holds up really well.