Android 7.0 Nougat brings several exciting features to the Android platform, including multi-window support, notification enhancements, data saver, and many new APIs, such as quick settings. We’re excited to announce that we have published Xamarin.Android support for Android 7.0 for both Xamarin Studio and Visual Studio. This release of Xamarin.Android is currently available in our Beta channel, alongside our Xamarin.iOS 10 preview support.

Installing Xamarin.Android for Android 7.0

To get full Android 7.0 support:

Visual Studio:

• Switch the Visual Studio Updater channel to the Beta channel.
• Install the Visual Studio for Xamarin updates.

Xamarin Studio:

• Switch the Xamarin Studio Updater channel to the Beta channel.
• Install the Xamarin.Android and Xamarin Studio updates.

Both Visual Studio & Xamarin Studio

• Android 7.0 development requires JDK 1.8 for compilation of applications; JDK 1.8 is available from Oracle. See the requirements documentation for more information.
• Start the Android SDK Manager:
  • Xamarin Studio, use Tools > Open Android SDK Manager
  • Visual Studio, use Tools > Android > Android SDK Manager

  Install the latest Android SDK tools, which are listed under Tools and include Android SDK Tools revision 25.1.7 or later, SDK Platform-tools 24 or later, and SDK Build-tools 24.0.1:

• Install Android 7.0(API 24) SDKs and Device Images:

For more information about using the Android SDK Manager to install the Android SDK, see SDK Manager.

Finally, when you create an Android project or want to take advantage of the new APIs in an existing project, you must configure the version settings to target Android 7.0. To target your project for Android 7.0, you must configure the target Android API level of your project to Android 7.0 (API 24 – Nougat). For more on configuring Android API levels, see our Understanding Android API Levels documentation.

Built on Open Source

In addition to supporting all of the latest Android 7.0 APIs this release of Xamarin.Android is the first to use our recently released open source repositories. This includes:

• Core JNI interaction logic from the Java.Interop repository.
• Android bindings and MSBuild tooling from the xamarin-android repository.
• Interaction with the Xamarin Android team in the xamarin/xamarin-android Gitter channel.

Visit open.xamarin.com to learn more about open source at Xamarin.

Learn More

Be sure to read our complete release notes for Xamarin.Android 7.0, which includes several other enhancements and optimizations. To get started with Android 7.0 Nougat development, browse through our full documentation on installing Xamarin.Android 7.0, creating emulators, and how to take advantage of these updates with several Xamarin.Android samples containing the latest features.