Xamarin.Forms

Support

Support for Xamarin.Forms ended on May 1, 2024 as per the Xamarin Support Policy:

Xamarin support ended on May 1, 2024 for all Xamarin SDKs including Xamarin.Forms.

Xamarin.Forms was succeeded by .NET MAUI in May 2022 as part of .NET 6, and is currently supported as described on the .NET MAUI Support Policy. Follow the official upgrade guidance to bring your Xamarin applications to the latest version of .NET.

To all our developers and contributors, thank you so much for being a part of our Xamarin community. We'll see you all over in .NET MAUI!

About Xamarin.Forms

Xamarin.Forms provides a way to quickly build native apps for iOS, Android, Windows and macOS, completely in C#.

Read more about the platform at https://www.xamarin.com/forms.

Packages

Platform/Feature | Package name | Stable | Prerelease | Nightly Feed Azure (main branch) -----------------------|-------------------------------------------|-----------------------------|------------------------- |-------------------------| Core | Xamarin.Forms | | | AppLinks | Xamarin.Forms.AppLinks | | | Maps | Xamarin.Forms.Maps | | | Maps.GTK | Xamarin.Forms.Maps.GTK | | | Maps.WPF | Xamarin.Forms.Maps.WPF | | | Pages | Xamarin.Forms.Pages | | | Pages.Azure | Xamarin.Forms.Pages.Azure | | | Platform.GTK | Xamarin.Forms.Platform.GTK | | | Platform.WPF | Xamarin.Forms.Platform.WPF | | | Visual.Material | Xamarin.Forms.Visual.Material | | |

If you want to use the latest dev build then you should read this blog post:

• Add the nightly feed to your NuGet sources or add a NuGet.Config to your app (placing it in the same directory where your solution file is) with the following content:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
  <configuration>
    <packageSources>
      <clear />
      <add key="xamarin-ci" value="https://aka.ms/xf-nightly/index.json" />
      <add key="NuGet.org" value="https://api.nuget.org/v3/index.json" />
    </packageSources>
  </configuration>
  

  NOTE: This NuGet.Config should be with your application unless you want nightly packages to potentially start being restored for other apps on the machine.

• Change your application's dependencies to have a * to get the latest version.

Getting Started

For both methods underneath you will have to add this NuGet feed for the build to succeed. See this documentation page to find out how.

Windows

Install Visual Studio 2019+

VS 2019+ is required for developing Xamarin.Forms. If you do not already have it installed, you can download it here. VS 2019+ Community is completely free. If you are installing VS 2019+ for the first time, select the "Custom" installation type and select the following from the features list to install:

• .NET desktop development
  • Individual Components > .NET > .NET Framework 4.6.1 SDK, .NET Framework 4.6.1 targeting pack, .NET Framework 4.7.2 SDK, .NET Framework 4.7.2 targeting pack.
• Universal Windows Platform Development
  • Individual Components > SDKs, libraries, and frameworks > Windows 10 SDK (10.0.19041.0), Windows 10 SDK (10.0.18362.0), Windows 10 SDK (10.0.16299.0).
  • Download and install 14393 from https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=838916
• Mobile Development with .NET
  • Individual Components > Development Activities > Xamarin Remoted Simulator
  • If you're not using Hyper-V Individual Components > Emulators > Hyper-V Intel Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager (HAXM)
• Most current SDK version of .NET Core
  • Or install the most current .NET Core SDK from here https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download

The Android 10.0 API 29 SDK and Android 9.0 API 28 SDK are required for developing Xamarin.Forms. They can be installed by using the Xamarin Android SDK Manager.

We also recommend installing Xamarin Android Device Manager. This will use the HAXM tools installed above and allow you to configure Android Virtual Devices (AVDs) that emulate Android devices. If you already have VS 2019+ installed, you can verify that these features are installed by modifying the VS 2019+ installation via the Visual Studio Installer.

Provisioning script

If you are getting errors about missing SDKs, you can run our provisioning script. Note that it can take some time to run the whole script. To better understand how the script works, feel free to check out our build.cake file.

• On CMD

  build.cmd -Target provision
  

• On Powershell

  ./build.ps1 -Target provision
  

  NOTE: If you encounter an error saying build.ps1 is not digitally signed, open Powershell as an administrator and resolve by running Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned first.

• On CMD/Powershell/sh (New! More info here)

  dotnet tool install Cake.Tool -g
  dotnet cake --target=provision
  

Mac

Install Visual Studio for Mac 2019

If you do not already have it installed, instructions to download and setup can be found here.

Because of current Multi-Targeting limitations with Visual Studio for Mac you will need to manually build/restore some projects before you are able to work on the Xamarin Forms solution.

Here are a few different options we've put together to help make this process easier

• Branches 3.5+ come with a Cake script target that you can use to build and open VSMac

  ./build.sh --target vsmac
  

  OR as mentioned above in the Windows section about provisioning, you can also use the new [Cake.Tool](https://cakebuild.net/do