WPF – Using Dispatcher vs SynchronizationContext

Every time I had to update the ui from a non-ui thread I always used the Application.Current.Dispatcher and never paid much attention to it. Just call a begin invoke from the other thread and you are done. It was only recently that I realized that that’s not the only way of doing things. There is an alternative way using the ‘SynchronizationContext’ which also gets the job done. So what’s the difference?
I couldn’t figure out anything obvious so I started reading up articles on it and finally found a comprehensive article here.
So basically SynchronizationContext adds another level of indirection. Unlike the dispatcher which is WPF specific, the SynchronizationContext has different implementations – WPF and WindowsForms being some of them. So, now your code is not dependent on any technology which is always great.
Though in theory the synchronization context can be used to communicate between any two threads, not all threads have a synchronization context. Only the UI thread has the required context and the plumbing code required for getting it to work.