Xamarin Blog

An open source mobile platform for building Android, iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS apps with .NET.

iOS - Xamarin Blog

Handling input from Apple Pencil

September 19, 2018 Sep 19, 2018 09/19/18
Prashant Cholachagudda
After months of contemplation before finally buying an Apple Pencil to go along with the iPad Pro, it turns out it is as magical as they say! This blog post describes how to use Xamarin.iOS and Visual Studio 2017 to build a signature pad app that works with Apple Pencil.

Securing network traffic with TLS 1.2

August 7, 2018 Aug 7, 2018 08/7/18
Tom Opgenorth
Secure and encrypted network communications are a crucial part of mobile application development. Without some kind of security around the communication layer, it is trivial for a third party to eavesdrop and tamper with the messages between the client and the server. If protecting the data being transmitted is important, then some kind of cryptography must be involved to protect both the sender and the receiver from malicious eyes.

Previewing Files Inside Your Xamarin.iOS App

July 25, 2018 Jul 25, 2018 07/25/18
Jimmy Garrido
If your app interacts with files, such as email attachments or photos, allowing users to preview those files without leaving your app is a great way to enhance the user's experience. Fortunately, iOS makes adding this feature simple by providing the document interaction controller and the Quick Look preview controller. In this post, you will learn the differences between the two options and how you can implement them in your app.

Requesting Reviews with iOS 10.3’s SKStoreReviewController

April 20, 2017 Apr 20, 2017 04/20/17
James Montemagno
Asking your users to review your app is never easy, and there was never an intuitive way to do it. Developers were left to constantly prompt users to review the app with pop ups or by putting a Leave Review button somewhere hidden in the settings, as I have done for many years (here is a quick blog to show you how to do it). Starting on iOS 10.3 this has all changed with the introduction of the SKStoreReviewController, which controls the process of requesting App Store ratings and reviews from your users with a streamlined, in-app dialog.

Securing Web Requests with TLS 1.2

April 4, 2017 Apr 4, 2017 04/4/17
James Montemagno
In my years of development, one thing I've learned for certain is that securing your network requests is an essential part of any mobile application. A few weeks ago one of my own applications stopped working due to a change to a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate on meetup.com's authentication server, which made me realize the important role Transport Layer Security (TLS) plays in securing app and server requests.

Consumable In-App Purchases

February 15, 2017 Feb 15, 2017 02/15/17
James Montemagno
If you are building a game or application with content that needs to be purchased multiple times, you'll need to integrate consumable in-app purchases (IAPs) into your application. In my previous IAP blog post, I covered the basics of setting up your app for IAP transactions, adding the IAP items to Google Play and iTunes Connect, and introduced you to the In-App Billing Plugin for Xamarin that greatly simplifies the process of adding IAP to your application's code. Today, we'll take a look at consumables and how they offer a slight tweak to the development process.