Right now, Xamarin.Forms template doesn’t have a Cocoa App initially. So, what you would do is to start Visual Studio for Mac or Xamarin Studio and open your existing Xamarin.Forms solution. Then, add a project into the solution by right-clicking the solution and selecting Add Add New Existing Project. Xamarin.Mac exposes the complete macOS SDK for.NET developers to build native Mac applications using C#.
- Xamarin Forms For Mac Os
- Xamarin Forms For Mac Catalina
- Xamarin Forms Formatted Text
- Xamarin Forms Samples
- Xamarin Forms Macos App
- Xamarin Forms For Mac Os
- Xamarin Forms Templates
The UI Kit screens can be added in your application by the following two ways:
- Using Essential UI Kit for Xamarin.Forms Visual Studio extension.
- Copying the files from our open source GitHub repository.
Essential UI Kit for Xamarin.Forms Extension
This is the easiest way to add the pre-defined screens to your application. The following steps explain how to add screens to an application with our extension:
Extension for Windows
- Open Visual Studio.
- Go to Extension, and then click Manage Extensions as shown in the following screenshot.
- Search for Essential UI Kit for Xamarin.Forms, and then install it.
- Restart the Visual Studio and allow it to complete the installation.
- Now, open an existing Xamarin.Forms application or create a new application as per your requirements.
- Right-click the Xamarin.Forms [NETStandard] project, and you can see the Essential UI Kit for Xamarin.Forms option.
NOTE
The Essential UI Kit for Xamarin.Forms add-in will be shown when the project have the Xamarin.Forms NuGet package as a reference and also, Xamarin.Forms project should be a NETStandard project.
Xamarin Forms For Mac Os
- Select the category and pages you need to add in your application. In the following screenshot, the Login Page with Gradient screen has been selected from the Login category.
- Clicking the ‘Add’ button will include the selected page to your project. The necessary class files, resources, and NuGet package references will automatically be added to your project as shown in the following screenshot.
Extension for MAC
- Download the UI Kit extension file from here.
- Install the extension file in Visual Studio for MAC by following this article.
- Right-click the Xamarin.Forms [NETStandard] project, and you can see the Essential UI Kit for Xamarin.Forms option.
NOTE
The Essential UI Kit for Xamarin.Forms add-in will be shown when the project have the Xamarin.Forms NuGet package as a reference and also, Xamarin.Forms project should be a NETStandard project.
- Select the category and pages you need to add in your application and click Add. In the following screenshot, the Simple Login Page screen has been selected from the Forms category.
Xamarin Forms For Mac Catalina
NOTE
If you are getting any type of “not found” or “does not exist” error while building the project, then open the .NET Standard project file in edit mode and search for ItemGroup with the remove command. If you find it, then delete that item group from the project file and rebuild the project again. Reference https://github.com/mhutch/MonoDevelop.AddinMaker/issues/78.
Customize various details of the visuals as well as make use of pre-defined graphic elements, buttons and other types of data.Moreover, users can make use of different menus, panels, and other available options for enhancing the visuals. Balsamiq Mockups 3.5 for Mac ReviewA powerful application for creating mockups, Balsamiq Mockups 3.5 comes with a reliable set of tools and an easily understandable environment that allows the users to work on different drawing objects without any efforts. Download mockup for mac photoshop.
How to render the added page
In a Xamarin.Forms demo application, you must make the added page as the start-up page in the App.xaml.cs file.
Example: If you added the Login Page, then you must invoke the page as demonstrated in the following code.
Example: If you added the Login Page, then you must invoke the page as demonstrated in the following code.
In real-world applications, you may need to do the following to use these XAML pages:
- Update the services for fetching the data from remote server or local database.
- Wire up the navigation and update the business logics in view models.
Requesting Screens and Reporting Bugs
If you would like to request a new screen or report a bug in existing screens, create a feature request or submit a bug through our feedback portal
Back in .NET Conf 2017 The Xamarin team already shared what’s going to be new with Xamarin Forms 3.0 and it actually surprised me. I was expecting some performance improvements, bug fixing and a big upgrade on XAML. But, what they announced focuses on enabling the usage of Xamarin.Forms in more ways and on more platforms. I was really hoping for XAML improvements, maybe add some cascading styling like how CSS works. Maybe sometime in the future, we’ll get it. For now, I’ll just use the XAMLCss by warapa. Anyway if you want to watch all sessions from .NET Conf 2017, you can check it out on Channel9. Going back, I really didn’t expect these new features, but definitely, I love it and really excited to try it out!
That’s why right now, I’m going to show to you one of the exciting features added to the Xamarin.Forms 3.0 that I think you’ll also love. I’m talking about Xamarin.Form’s macOS support.
One of the Xamarin team’s plan is to reach more platforms. That means UWP, iOS and Android are not only platform the Xamarin.Forms will be able to target from now on, they are also bringing macOS, GTK#, Linux and WPF!
You might think that it will be hard and will take a lot of time to integrate your Xamarin.Forms solution into the macOS project, but it’s not. Not at all. You’ll be able to create a native macOS application using your Xamarin.Forms solution using Visual Studio for Mac or Xamarin Studio in just 3 quick steps!
First step: Add a Cocoa App project
Right now, Xamarin.Forms template doesn’t have a Cocoa App initially. So, what you would do is to start Visual Studio for Mac or Xamarin Studio and open your existing Xamarin.Forms solution. Then, add a project into the solution by right-clicking the solution and selecting Add > Add New Existing Project.
Xamarin Forms Formatted Text
You can then select Mac > App > Cocoa App and name it whatever you want, but ideally, the name has a suffix of .macOs.
Second Step: Add the Xamarin.Forms NuGet Package
You will have to add the Xamarin.Forms’ latest pre-release nuget package or specifically 2.4.0.282. To do this, right click the Cocoa App project that you just created and select Add > Add Nuget Packages.
Then, search for ‘Xamarin.Forms’ and make sure that the ‘Show pre-release packages’ is ticked. Click ‘Add’ to add Xamarin.Forms nuget package.
You will also need to update the Xamarin.Forms on your shared project and the version should be the same with what the Cocoa app have.
Third Step: Configure the Cocoa App Project
The first thing that you should do with your Cocoa app project is to add the shared project into your Cocoa app as a reference.
Then, open the Info.plist and remove the ‘Main storyboard file base name’ entry (Opened with XCode)
Or just open the Info.plist inside Visual Studio or Xamarin Studio by clicking it and leave the Main Interface blank.
Xamarin Forms Samples
The next one is to update your Main.cs’ Main method to initialize the AppDelegate:
Lastly, update the AppDelegate by changing the NSApplicationDelegate to FormsApplicationDelegate:
Initialize the Cocoa app window within the constructor:
Xamarin Forms Macos App
Then inside the DidFinishLaunching method, initialize Xamarin.Forms and load the application:
You can now set your project as the startup project and run your macOS!
Xamarin Forms For Mac Os
Again, in just 3 quick steps, it’s done!
Xamarin Forms Templates
This is just a basic walkthrough since this is still on preview. Expect that there are still bugs and not ready for production. Not all nuget packages are compatible and surely, there are lots of UI features still not implemented, but this is a good start. For now, you can send your issues and problems that you encounter in this forum discussion: https://forums.xamarin.com/discussion/93585/preview-xamarin-forms-for-macos/p1