Xamarin Visual Studio IOS Development Without a Mac?

c# android ios macos xamarin
Hardgraf picture Hardgraf · Aug 26, 2014 · Viewed 68.4k times · Source

I'm a .NET developer and want to write an IOS & Android app in C#. I've had a read around Xamarin for Visual Studio which looks interesting if not a tad expensive!

Do you need a Mac to debug your code? Do you just need a networked Mac to actually deploy the app to the Store?

Is the best option just to buy a Mac and run Windows with VS in a VM or can I just use my windows machine, write & debug the code in Windows then just hook up to a networked Mac for final deployment?

Answer

ebattulga picture ebattulga · May 17, 2017

From May 2017, you can develop app without MAC.

Microsoft Xamarin introduce a Live Player. With Live Player, iOS apps can be deployed directly onto an iPhone or other iDevice from a PC running Visual Studio, where the code can then be tested and debugged.

WARNING The Xamarin Live Player Preview has ended. See discussion

See this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awgZDL1a3YI

this is Live Player Get start section: Live Player

Note: The final build and submission to the App Store will still require a Mac

Device Requirements

The Xamarin Live Player app supports the following devices:

iOS

  • iOS 9.0 or later.
  • ARM64 processor.
  • Check the App Store for a list of supported devices.

Android

  • Android 4.2 or later.
  • ARM-v7a, ARM-v8a, ARM64-v8a, x86, or x86_64 processor.

Limitations

There are some limitations on the things Xamarin Live Player can run, including the items below:

  • Android user interfaces designed with AXML files are not currently supported.
  • Some iOS storyboard features are not supported.
  • iOS XIB files are not supported.
  • Custom Renderers are not supported.
  • Xamarin.Forms Effects are not supported.
  • Embedded resources are not supported (ie. embedding images or other resources in a PCL).
  • Limited support for reflection (currently affects some popular NuGets, like SQLite and Json.NET). Other NuGets are still supported.
  • Some system classes cannot be overridden (for example, you cannot implement a subclass).
  • Some platform features that require provisioning can't work in the Xamarin Live Player app (however it has been configured for common operations like camera access).
  • Custom targets and build steps are ignored. For example, tools like Fody cannot be incorporated.

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