Xamarin Blog

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

Xamarin.Essentials - Xamarin Blog

The Xamarin Show: Exploring Awesome Xamarin & Visual Studio Features

July 5, 2018 Jul 5, 2018 07/5/18
James Montemagno
Each week on The Xamarin Show we explore the latest and greatest in Xamarin development by looking at new features built into Visual Studio, build native cross-platform user interfaces with Xamarin.Forms, and access to native APIs with Xamarin.Essentials. I am also joined by Xamarin experts that show off the awesome beautiful libraries and applications they are building with Xamarin. No matter what type of development you are into there is surely something for you over on The Xamarin Show. This week, I wanted to feature a few "Snack Pack" episodes that show off an awesome feature in under 10 minutes!

More Cross-Platform APIs with Xamarin.Essentials Latest Preview

June 14, 2018 Jun 14, 2018 06/14/18
James Montemagno
We announced Xamarin.Essentials, a core set of cross-platform APIs to help developers build native apps, at Microsoft Build 2018. Xamarin.Essentials gives developers access to over thirty platform-specific APIs that can be accessed from their shared code, including geolocation, secure storage, sensors, device information, and many more. Best of all, Xamarin.Essentials can be used in any iOS, Android, UWP, or Xamarin.Forms app, regardless of how you create the user interface. Feedback on the first preview from developers has been fantastic, with praise of a simple and straightforward way to access these native features.

Xamarin.Essentials: Cross-Platform APIs for Mobile Apps

May 16, 2018 May 16, 2018 05/16/18
James Montemagno
When developing iOS and Android apps with Xamarin, developers can access every native platform API using C#. These bindings not only expose the platform APIs in C#, but add powerful C# features, such as async/await, events, delegates, and more. This is a huge advantage for developers, because they never have to leave C#, whether they're writing shared business logic, user interface, or accessing native features. One key feature developers often look for when developing cross-platform apps with Xamarin is a way to access common native features from their shared code without having to write their own abstractions or find an open source plugin created by the community.