Announcing .NET MAUI in .NET 8 Preview 5

Hello everyone! I’m thrilled to announce that .NET MAUI in .NET 8 Preview 5 is now available with lots of bug fixes and performance improvements for cross-platform app development. In this post, I’ll summarize some of the most important changes in this release and show you how to update your .NET MAUI project to use this release.

What’s fixed and improved in .NET MAUI

Preview 5 is another quality-focused update that fixes many issues and enhances the performance of the framework, including:

iOS Keyboard Scrolling: ContentInsets were added to improve the scrolling behavior of the iOS keyboard. #14371
Test Improvements: Various improvements and fixes were made to the tests, including the removal of the skip attribute from a test related to SearchBarHandler. #14852
Performance Enhancements: Performance improvements were made to the {Binding} mechanism and the layout performance of labels on Android. #14830, #14933, #14980
Bug Fixes: Several bug fixes were implemented, addressing issues such as gestures in Label Spans, Entry issues with the keyboard, Label truncation on iOS, CollectionView issues, ContentView RTL, and more. #14410, #14382, #14453, #14391, #11763, #15114, #12909

These are just some of the highlights of this release. For a complete list of changes, please check out the release notes.

How to update

Visual Studio 2022 on Windows now includes .NET 8 previews and the .NET MAUI preview workload. Download the latest preview version 17.7 Preview 2, select the .NET Multi-platform App UI workload, and then check the optional component “.NET MAUI (.NET 8 Preview)”.

If you are on macOS, you may download the .NET 8 preview 5 installer, and then install .NET MAUI from the command line:

dotnet workload install maui

To verify that everything is installed correctly, you can run the following command:

dotnet --list-sdks

You should see something like this:

8.0.100-preview.5.23303.2 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]

And to verify you have the correct .NET MAUI workload, run the command:

dotnet workload list

You should see something like this:

Installed Workload Id      Manifest Version                            Installation Source
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
maui-windows               8.0.0-preview.5.8529/8.0.100-preview.5      VS 17.5.33627.172, VS 17.7.33808.371
maui-maccatalyst           8.0.0-preview.5.8529/8.0.100-preview.5      VS 17.5.33627.172, VS 17.7.33808.371
maccatalyst                16.4.8525-net8-p5/8.0.100-preview.5         VS 17.5.33627.172, VS 17.7.33808.371
maui-ios                   8.0.0-preview.5.8529/8.0.100-preview.5      VS 17.5.33627.172, VS 17.7.33808.371
ios                        16.4.8525-net8-p5/8.0.100-preview.5         VS 17.5.33627.172, VS 17.7.33808.371
maui-android               8.0.0-preview.5.8529/8.0.100-preview.5      VS 17.5.33627.172, VS 17.7.33808.371
android                    34.0.0-preview.5.312/8.0.100-preview.5      VS 17.5.33627.172, VS 17.7.33808.371

Updating existing projects

To update your .NET MAUI project to use 8.0.0-preview.5.8529, you first need to install the .NET 8 Preview 5 SDK and then update the .NET MAUI NuGet packages in your project. You can use Visual Studio or Visual Studio for Mac to manage your NuGet packages or edit your project file manually.

To use Visual Studio or Visual Studio for Mac, right-click on your project and select “Manage NuGet Packages…” then select the “Include prerelease” option and search for Microsoft.Maui. packages. Update all the packages to version 8.0.0-preview.5.8529. To edit your project file manually, open it in a text editor and find the ItemGroup element that contains the PackageReference elements for Microsoft.Maui. packages. Update all the Version attributes to 8.0.0-preview.5.8529.

Your project file should have an ItemGroup that looks something like this:

<ItemGroup>
    <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.Maui.Controls" Version="$(MauiVersion)" />
    <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.Maui.Controls.Compatibility" Version="$(MauiVersion)" />
    <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.Extensions.Logging.Debug" Version="8.0.0-preview.5.23280.8" />
</ItemGroup>

Now you can build and run your project using Visual Studio or Visual Studio for Mac or use the dotnet build command with the -t:Run target:

dotnet build -t:Run -f net8-android MyMauiApp.csproj

This will build and launch your app on an Android emulator or device.

Feedback Welcome

We appreciate your feedback and contributions to .NET MAUI. You can report issues, suggest features, or submit pull requests on our GitHub repository. You can also join our Discord server or follow us on Twitter to stay in touch with the latest news and updates.

Thank you for your support and happy coding!