Chapter 2 Working with Visual Studio 2022

Creating a MAUI Application

To get started with our first MAUI application, create a new project in Visual Studio and filter the project templates to display the MAUI project type, as seen in Figure 2-16.

Figure 2-16.  The .NET MAUI App project template

Select the .NET MAUI App template and click the Next button. Give your solution a suitable name, select a location to create your application, and click the Next button. On the next screen, as of the writing of this book, only .NET 6.0 is available for the Framework selection. Clicking the Create button will create the project and restore the

required NuGet package references. Once complete, you will see the project structure as illustrated in Figure 2-17.

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Figure 2-17.  The HelloMAUI project structure

From the Visual Studio toolbar, change the Debug Target drop-down to select the Android Emulator, as seen in Figure 2-18.

Figure 2-18.  Choosing Android as the Debug Target

Clicking the Android Emulator button will install the default Android SDK and Emulator. The Android SDK might also ask you to accept the required license

agreements to continue. After this, the Android Emulator will start, and the application will be deployed to the Emulator. This might take some time, so be patient while the

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application is deployed to the Emulator. Once the application is deployed, it will be displayed in the Emulator as seen in Figure 2-19.

Figure 2-19.  The MAUI App running on Android

In the running application in the Android Emulator, click the Click me button to increment the counter.

Pairing to Mac for iOS Development

As mentioned earlier, if you want to build native iOS applications using .NET MAUI, you require access to Apple’s build tools which can only be run on a Mac. You will therefore need to connect Visual Studio 2022 to a network-accessible Mac to build .NET MAUI applications for iOS. Visual Studio makes this process easy with the Pair to Mac feature. This will discover, connect, and authenticate with suitable Mac build hosts. The Pair to Mac allows developers to

•\ Write .NET MAUI iOS code in Visual Studio 2022.

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