When correctly use Task.Run and when just async-await

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Note the guidelines for performing work on a UI thread, collected on my blog:

  • Don’t block the UI thread for more than 50ms at a time.
  • You can schedule ~100 continuations on the UI thread per second; 1000 is too much.

There are two techniques you should use:

1) Use ConfigureAwait(false) when you can.

E.g., await MyAsync().ConfigureAwait(false); instead of await MyAsync();.

ConfigureAwait(false) tells the await that you do not need to resume on the current context (in this case, “on the current context” means “on the UI thread”). However, for the rest of that async method (after the ConfigureAwait), you cannot do anything that assumes you’re in the current context (e.g., update UI elements).

For more information, see my MSDN article Best Practices in Asynchronous Programming.

2) Use Task.Run to call CPU-bound methods.

You should use Task.Run, but not within any code you want to be reusable (i.e., library code). So you use Task.Run to call the method, not as part of the implementation of the method.

So purely CPU-bound work would look like this:

// Documentation: This method is CPU-bound.
void DoWork();

Which you would call using Task.Run:

await Task.Run(() => DoWork());

Methods that are a mixture of CPU-bound and I/O-bound should have an Async signature with documentation pointing out their CPU-bound nature:

// Documentation: This method is CPU-bound.
Task DoWorkAsync();

Which you would also call using Task.Run (since it is partially CPU-bound):

await Task.Run(() => DoWorkAsync());

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