Announcing .NET MAUI in .NET 8 Release Candidate 2: More Quality
Today, we take one step closer to .NET 8 general availability (GA) by shipping .NET MAUI in .NET 8 release candidate 2 (RC2). As with RC1, this release is covered by a go-live license so you can receive support when using it in your production applications. In this release we have focused on issues that regressed throughout the previews, and regaining some performance that was lost as we improved the reliability of hot reload, visual state manager, bindings, and app themes.
Quality Improvements
In addition to our narrowed focus on regressions we have also increased the battery of manual tests and automated testing. There are no breaking API changes between .NET 7 and .NET 8, so you can expect the upgrade for your applications to go smoothly in that respect. For more information about upgrading from 7 to 8, follow this simple guide.
Highlights from this release:
Performance Improvements: Several performance improvements were made, including enhancements to the performance of ActivityExtensions.GetWindowFrame on Android, and “Setter Specificity” performance. These optimizations contribute to smoother app performance. (#17241, #17364, #17230, #17505, #17545).
UI and Control Fixes: Several fixes and updates were made to controls and UI elements, including fixes related to CollectionView, TabBar visibility, RoundRectangle Borders, and Android text alignment. With these your app UI is more consistent and visually accurate across platforms. (#16870, #17240, #17261, #17353, #17430, #17594), #17567).
Platform-Specific Fixes: Several platform-specific fixes were made, including drag-and-drop functionality, tab bar appearance, and specific platform behaviors, ensuring a consistent user experience across platforms. (#15748, #16561, #17495, #17041, #17358.
The release also includes numerous other bug fixes, enhancements, and contributions. Check out the full release notes for more details.
Additional information:
Bonus: .NET 7 Service Release
Today we have also shipped .NET MAUI service release 8 (version 7.0.96) for .NET 7 including select high-priority fixes for layout, memory leaks, CollectionView, safe area, and more. You can use this service release by installing .NET 8 RC2 using one of the methods below and continuing to build your applications to target .NET 7.
Alternatively, you can acquire 7.0.96 by upgrading to Visual Studio 17.7.5.
Bonus 2: Xcode 15 and Android API 34
Xamarin developers can now use Xcode 15 to target the latest versions (e.g iOS 17, iPadOS 17), and target Android API 34 in order to be compliant with store policies. To do this, install Visual Studio 17.8 Preview 3 or the latest stable version of Visual Studio for Mac and configure your environment as usual. This does not provide newer platform APIs, but does enable existing projects to continue building while you complete your upgrades to .NET 8 and .NET MAUI regardless of the Xamarin end-of-support date next year.
How to update
On all platforms, you can develop with .NET MAUI using Visual Studio Code. Install the .NET MAUI extension and let us know how we can improve this preview experience for you in the future.
Download the .NET 8 RC2 installer, and then install .NET MAUI from the command line:
dotnet workload install mauiThrough the retirement of Visual Studio for Mac next year you can continue developing using Visual Studio for Mac after enabling the preview feature for .NET 8 in Preferences.
On Windows, update or install Visual Studio 2022 17.8 preview 3 to get .NET 8 RC2 with .NET MAUI (and 7.0.96).
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 to all 23 contributors (and bots) who helped put this release together!
Thank you for your support and happy coding!
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38 comments
“More quality” Well let’s hope at least unreleased fixes for .NET 6 and .NET 7 bugs for basic functionality (layouting, CollectionView) will make it to the .NET 8 release.
Have you hired more developers since .NET MAUI official release in summer 2022? They are needed desperately.
Looks like they hired more PMs than developers.
I’ll stay on xamarin till we get long press support.
I have been diligently converting a huge Xamarin framework for my company, working with the .NET Maui team to “squish” the bugs, and using the nightly builds. I point you in the direction of issue [WinUI] CarouselView layout issues : Take 1, 2, 3, FOUR
I am certainly available for further discussion and technical assistance.
I found it easy to download and install Visual Studio 17.8 including .NET MAUI RC 2.
I’ve upgraded 2 projects from .NET 7 Maui to .NET 8 MAUI RC2.
I was surprised that the upgrade was very easy. Only a couple of minor problems concerning the project file and some images (jpg, png) with identical names.
I checked with the list of bugs I’ve encountered with .NET 7 MAUI. Coding with MAUI is getting better and better.
you can’t make this stuff up 🤡 dragging a slider crashes the app! WTF???
don’t tell me anything about quality!
https://github.com/dotnet/maui/issues/17974
David, when do you think it’s time to declare MAUI a failure? Shipping this thing as production-ready for years now is just a straight-up lie and pathetic
It’s great to see the performance improvements getting in place with very basic functionalities failing. As a architect I’ve chosen this framework and I am stuck with not able to implement very basic functionalities like push notifications in .NET 7. And we got .NET 8 here.
Who needs performance updates when we can’t make the very basic functionalities work and I’m wondered as when I’m not able to find a single working example with code in this popular framework for push notifications using firebase. All the firebase and Google play libraries were outdated and last updated years ago.
Only with this framework, we’re feeling like we can live with whatever working and find workarounds for the one that’s not. When I need to answer that I can’t use cookies in common Web view in .NET 6 and we need to wait a year plus for the .NET 8 to be released for that to my management. Only convincing reply I can tell them is that the framework is backed by Microsoft and still we need to wait upto a year for cookies to work.
Great work David and the team, love the .NET 7 service pack as I’m using a lot of Syncfusion controls and it seems they’re not supporting .NET 8 yet.
I share the frustration of others over some of the smaller bugs, such as the Span gestures as mentioned by a previous commenter. However it’s great to see the progress .NET MAUI is making, I have now finished converting all of my apps over and although the process wasn’t always smooth, I’m very happy with the end result. Looking forward to more frequent releases so show-stopping bugs aren’t an issue for months!
Thanks!
I’m relieved to find RC2 is looking in much better shape than RC1, no blockers for releasing our app against it, thanks!
Over the years I’ve worked with different platforms, frameworks, languages, etc. I’m an avid .net/c# lover and despite this developing with MAUI has been the worst experience I have ever had in my life. The sheer number of issues you come across when attempting to implement absolutely basic functionality and the lack of acknowledgment from Microsoft regarding the horrendous state MAUI is in makes a person really want to give up.