It’s impossible to ignore Xamarin when talking about the key approaches to mobile application development. Xamarin is a tool used for cross-platform mobile app development that allows engineers to share up to 90 percent of code across major platforms. Being a comparatively new tool, it is based on the Microsoft technology stack and already has a community of over 1.4 million developers.

The platform was built by the developers behind Mono, an open-source development platform based on the .NET Framework, led by Miguel de Icaza and first introduced in 2001. The Xamarin company was founded on May 16, 2011.

However, unlike its predecessor, Xamarin was created as a commercial project until the company was acquired by Microsoft in 2016. Xamarin became a popular cross-platform product for developing mobile apps within the Microsoft ecosystem. This acquisition broke the financial barrier for using Xamarin. As Microsoft made Xamarin SDK open-source, it became part of Xamarin Visual Studio Integrated Development Environment (we discuss the best IDEs to use for Xamarin development below).

Complete binding for the underlying SDKs – Xamarin contains bindings for nearly the entire underlying platform SDKs in both iOS and Android. Additionally, these bindings are strongly-typed, which means that they’re easy to navigate and use, and provide robust compile-time type checking and during development. Strongly-typed bindings lead to fewer runtime errors and higher-quality applications.

Objective-C, Java, C, and C++ Interop – Xamarin provides facilities for directly invoking Objective-C, Java, C, and C++ libraries, giving you the power to use a wide array of third-party code. This functionality lets you use existing iOS and Android libraries written in Objective-C, Java, or C/C++. Additionally, Xamarin offers binding projects that allow you to bind native Objective-C and Java libraries using a declarative syntax.

Modern language constructs – Xamarin applications are written in C#, a modern language that includes significant improvements over Objective-C and Java such as dynamic language features, functional constructs such as lambdas, LINQ, parallel programming, generics, and more.

Robust Base Class Library (BCL) – Xamarin applications use the .NET BCL, a large collection of classes that have comprehensive and streamlined features such as powerful XML, Database, Serialization, IO, String, and Networking support, and more. Existing C# code can be compiled for use in an app, which provides access to thousands of libraries that add functionality beyond the BCL.

Modern Integrated Development Environment (IDE) – Xamarin uses Visual Studio, a modern IDE that includes features such as code auto-completion, a sophisticated project and solution management system, a comprehensive project template library, integrated source control, and more.

Mobile cross-platform support – Xamarin offers sophisticated cross-platform support for the three major platforms of iOS, Android, and Windows. Applications can be written to share up to 90% of their code, and Xamarin. Essentials offer a unified API to access common resources across all three platforms. Shared code can significantly reduce both development costs and time to market for mobile developers.

Xamarin app development is one of the most sought-after ways for businesses to ensure time-effectiveness as well as ease of creation for the developers. The single language in the technology stack that is C# can be used for creating multiple solutions without having to switch environments, all thanks to the Visual Studio. The single technological stack in the Xamarin Framework makes it easy to use and learn.

Xamarin application development results in the creation of applications that offer native or near-native experience with the use of Xamarin. forms. The frameworks have access to the native APIs that are currently used for platforms like Android, iOS while the nativeness is the result of some platform-specific elements that can be found in C# and Visual Studio. In addition to this, Xamarin. Forms further ensure the creation of convenient UIs for platforms like iOS, Windows as well as Android.

Being an open-source framework, Xamarin is constantly improving as we say. Apart from this, the framework is backed by the most dominant power in the world that is Microsoft, making it rather scalable, stable as well as robust.

With almost 95% of the code that can be reused once it's written, Xamarin app development is considered one of the easiest tasks to perform. This strategically reduces the amount of time required for the completion of the application tasks while significantly reducing the effort required as well. The developers can run a single codebase across multiple platforms with only a minimal change required.

Xamarin test clouds, unlike others, allow the developers to test their application continuously during the development process which thereby results in faultless code generation. In addition to this, the Xamarin test cloud can be used across multiple mobile platforms to test the application without having to buy multiple devices for individual testing. Finding performance issues before the release of the application makes way for a rather cost-effective solution when compared to other frameworks.

Since the Xamarin app development framework uses a single technological stack as well as a reusable code, the time required by the developers for the development of a single application is significantly reduced while at the same time allowing them to release their software faster to the client. Since the entire process is carried out between C# and the Visual studio, the organization only requires a single team to work on the task as it is streamlined significantly thereby eliminating additional expenses required for multiple teams. tart building on a smaller level and scale up moving forward.

Since the frameworks allow code reuse, the application was created with Xamarin. Forms are rather easy to maintain. Applying changes to the source code when concurred with an issue can be ultimately seen on the other aspects as well thereby saving time and money. Apart from this, the large community is always ready to support with issues at hand while providing proper documentation as well as training.

Since Xamarin app development with its many benefits has been proven rather beneficial for business organizations, the popularity of the framework seems no bound in the present times. Developing the mobile application with Xamarin results in cost-effectiveness as well as increased efficiency in addition to getting the native apps like experience as well.

In UI creation on the Xamarin platform time becomes an important issue. It provides you with the ability to reuse code around the application platform target. A portable version of the core UI is difficult to build. This is why experts in Xamarin App Creation thoroughly cod for an independent platform, a time-consuming process.

While Xamarin helps to save a lot of time, it produces a single application for the entire platform. On the other hand, the relation between the references and code to the destination OS environment of various devices and.net frameworks often indicates that the time taken to start up and update the apps will be increased.

Even more, time-consuming, it needs more space to store the device file size by using Xamarin’s total core libraries as well as the device stores features in the wrong client file size. The size of the store range can be between 3 MB and 15 MB.

This was one of the most significant downsides of Xamarin. Android, iOS, and NET developers have huge community support forums, groups, and communities with a wealth of information. When compared to all those, Xamarin is relatively new, so the community still has to develop. If you happen to hit roadblocks during app development, there is no guarantee that you will be able to find a solution for it online. You might have to hire a Xamarin Certified Partner, a partner program that will help you with your issues as they have more access to support resources.

When comparing the pros and cons, the listed drawbacks are usually considered to be collateral damage. Most business owners choose Xamarin mobile app development platform as it decreases the time to market and engineering cost, by sharing the code and using a single technology stack. Yet the purpose of the app and its target audience might be an even more important factor to consider.

Based on our team’s experience, the best use case for Xamarin is enterprise mobile solutions. With standard UI which covers 90 percent of the projects, all the core product logic can be easily shared across the platforms. Hence, platform customization will only take 5-10 percent of the engineering effort.

In the case of consumer-facing apps with heavy UI, the amount of shared code decreases drastically. Thus, Xamarin cross-platform development loses its major benefit and might equal in time and cost to native solutions.

Hello guys, today we'll know everything about Xamarin.

Advantages & Disadvantages of Xamarin

Xamarin is a software company that started in 2011. Microsoft recently acquired Xamarin in 2016. Xamarin provides a wide range of tools to the developer that can be used for the development of the cross-platform mobile application.

It is a framework to develop a cross-platform mobile application using the C#. There are various frameworks, which offer the ross-platform app development. They use HTML and JavaScript. With the help of this framework, we can develop apps like a website for a mobile app using JS libraries. The website is packed in a container which gives the feel of a native app.

Xamarin is different because it offers a single language C# and runtime, which works on three mobile platforms (Android, iOS, and Windows). Through Xamarin, we develop a mobile app whose look and feel is entirely native. In Xamarin, we write one C# codebase which has access to all the features of native SDK.

To download with Visual Studio, Xamarin tools are readily available. To use Xamarin on Windows, we need to install Visual Studio, which could be a free version or a premium license. After it, we need to configure it. 

Xamarin supports wearable devices such as Android Wear and Apple Watch. The functionalities of these wearable devices in their native application are included by downloading the simple plugins from the XamarinCo Component Store.

Popular Plugins are Cross-Platform, such as Text-to-speech and battery status. Platform-specific plugins too are available in Xamarin component store such as the Google Play billing support plugins.

The Xamarin based cross-platform applications can easily be united to most of the popular backend platform such as Parse, Microsoft Azure, etc.

Applications indexing in Xamarin allows those applications to be in search results, which are usually gets forgotten after a few uses from the users.

Commercial products are available from Xamarin.IOS: Xamarin.Android.

The two are developed on Mono, the open source.net platform, based on the published ECMA standard. MONO runs on all possible platforms, including Linux, Unix, FreeBSD, and macOS, as the .NET system itself.

It completely converted the iOS SDK and Android to C# so that the developer could become acquainted with it.

Without the complexity of constantly learning syntactic languages, you can simply use the similarCodeBase for both the framework.

And the UI is still the same. For the application, it has to be developed independently, then the shared codebase must be reduced.

Below are both ways the user interface can be developed. First, using the original native approach to construct the user interface. The Xamarin. Forms are a further one. These types can be used to render the user interface for different platforms simultaneously and share the code 100% if you want Native UI technology.

When the entire UI is done, the most chief move is the relation between the UI and the codebase.

The most crucial part of Xamarin App Development platform is that it contains the reusable code, 90% of which can be recycled for the development of apps on various platforms. The coding is based on C# language and .Net libraries. Since developers can reuse a great portion of original Xamarin codes for creating apps across different platforms. Due to simplified code sharing across different OS, Users have a shortened Product development lifecycle.

The solution for any application is native design. That is when Xamarin and its unique approach comes into existence. Xamarin Studio provides the advantage of Native UI, access to specific device features and most importantly, native performance. Sharing the code between the different platform is an easy task, which helps us to shorten the development lifecycle.

Apart from Native UI, the most powerful feature of Xamarin is shared, the app logic, which makes it is the most useful and most-usable cross-platform development tool. Application Logic underlying the UI layer like input validation, web service calls, database interactions, and backend enterprises integrations are coded once in C#. Developers can share 75% of the code across the various operating system. It saves the time to record in the applications, and there are fewer chances of the bugs.

Xamarin binds the same APIs and UI controls which are used to build the iOS, Android, and Mac apps in their respective platform-specific language. For Windows development, Xamarin with Microsoft Visual Studio offers windows phone and windows applications. Code is shared between iOS, Android, and Windows using the Portable Class Library (PCL) and appropriate application architecture. With Xamarin, support is always there. These unique binding technologies enable us to to provide the support for the new feature as soon as they come in the device's operating system. Click on the respective platform links for their latest support packages for iOS 8 and Android L(with wearable support).

Xamarin believes in Collaboration and Component sharing. The developer chooses from the host free or paid component, which includes UI controls, cross-platform libraries, and third party web services to apps with just a few lines of code. The component store is built in the Xamarin Studio and Xamarin's Visual Studio extensions.

C# is a simple, modern, general-purpose, type-safe, pure object-oriented programming language. Being the object-oriented, it is the modern version of C++, which allows the simple data types as objects. The type safety of C# helps to prevent the type errors. Its simplified syntax allows the use of pointers and headers. Namespace and reference operator is replaced by the period. C# is a great programming language for cross-platform development.

Despite all the facts that Xamarin Mobile Application Development saves time by creating a single app for all the platform. On the other hand, it also involves in the linkage of the code and references between the target OS environment of different devices in use, and .Net frameworks show that this increases the time taken in the initiation and in downloading the apps.

2) Time-Consuming Nature of UI development

Time becomes an essential thing in UI development on the platform of Xamarin. Xamarin offers the facility to reuse the code across the target of the device platform. It is hard to create a portable version of the core UI. That is why Xamarin App Development experts thoroughly perform some portion of coding for an independent platform, which is a time-consuming process.

With consuming more time, Xamarin takes more space in storing the app file size because of the usage of the general use of Xamarin's core libraries and functionality of the app stores with the wrong app file size. The size margin in the store may range from 3MB to 15MB.

Xamarin is otherwise called the ruler of cross-stage application advancement. The rich highlights and coming about advantages of all focuses towards the cross-stage local applications. Notwithstanding the benefits of the Xamarin, it gloats up the steadily developing local area of 70,000 or more engineers who are persistently working together and upgrading the product.

In this article, will we discuss about Xamarin

 Xamarin : an overview

However, unlike its predecessor, Xamarin was created as a commercial project until the company was acquired by Microsoft in 2016. Xamarin became a popular cross-platform product for developing mobile apps within the Microsoft ecosystem. This acquisition broke the financial barrier for using Xamarin. As Microsoft made Xamarin SDK open-source, it became part of Xamarin Visual Studio Integrated Development Environment.

Download Visual Studio 2019 from the Visual Studio site and source.

Perform the installation steps by double-clicking.

Then select Mobile development with .NET for installation on the opened page and start the installation process again.

Select Install and click to begin the installation process.

It takes a while to complete the installation process. After completing the installation process, select and launch to run it.

After installing Visual Studio, it is time to add Xamarin to Visual Studio.

After you install Xamarin, you can restart it, in which case Xamarin will be added to Visual Studio.

To make sure whether Xamarin has been added to Visual Studio or not, you can click on the Help menu and see if Xamarin is installed or not.

Another way to make sure whether Xamarin has been added to Visual Studio or not, can go to Help> About Microsoft Visual Studio and see Xamarin in the list of added programs.

After installing Xamarin, we need to add Xamarin.Ios to Visual Studio as well.

To make Xamarin. Ios settings, you must install Visual Studio 2019 on your Windows system.

Reinstall Xcode and Visual Studio on your Mac.

     To be able to build and debug and sign iOS applications, Apple’s development tools (Xcode) and 
     Xamarin.Ios must be connected to the Mac build host configured via the Internet.

3.   In the next step, you need to install Visual studio2019 on your Mac system.

      For visual studio 2019 to be able to use the ios build tools to get help connecting to the Mac, connect 
      to both Mac and Windows systems over the network.

How to Install Xamarin. android on Windows

Today, with new updates to Xamarin and Visual Studio, Xamarin includes all the editions that previously existed in Visual Studio. Of course, all these editions are available at Xamarin at no cost and can be used. For this reason, you can use a visual studio installer to download and install xamarin. android tools, in this method, there is no need to download and install some licenses.

In this part of the Xamarin. android installation tutorial, you will learn the following:

How to determine the right place to store the Java development kit, Android SDK and Android NDK?

How to set up an Android device for troubleshooting and testing.

How to create and launch the first Xamarin. android project.

After following this tutorial, you will have Xamarin. android installed on your system that is ready to create your first project and you can easily create and launch your first project.

After installing Xamarin on Visual Studio, we have to adjust it. Install Xamarin according to the tutorials listed above and add it to Visual Studio.

Java Development Kit (JDK) and Android SDK are used to build applications in xamarin. android, which is used to build and create projects and applications in Android.

Android API level settings are used to find similarities between your application and different versions of Android. Android API levels that you select and use to build and create applications can require different Android SDKs. This means that the number of Android SDKs you have to install can vary depending on the Android API level you choose. If needed, you can also install emulator images inside the Android SDK through the Android SDK Manager. The access path to these Tools is> Android> Android SDK Manager.

Note that Visual Studio installs Google Android SDK Manager by default.

All versions of the Android SDK Tool package before version 25.2.3 can be installed using Google Android SDK Manager, but if you want to install higher versions, you must install the plugin called Xamarin Android SDK plugin on Visual Studio and add.

In this blog, we'll get to know how to install Xamarin on Windows and Android.

Installation of Xamarin

Microsoft now has .NET Core, .NET Framework and Xamarin (Mono) in its family.

It seems to be a lot of overlap here. What's the difference between these types of .NET Platforms? When should I choose to use .NET Core in my project, instead of .NET Framework or Xamarin?

What's the difference between .NET Core, .NET Framework, and Xamarin?

I am confused between Xamarin.Forms and Xamarin native.

So what are the technical positives and negatives of using Xamarin.Forms over Xamarin Native?

What is the difference between Xamarin.Forms and Xamarin Native?

Currently I explore the Visual Studio 2015 RC and realized that Xamarin Studio is integrated into Visual Studio and its installer. My Question is: Is Xamarin from now on free in Visual Studio? 

Is Xamarin free in Visual Studio 2015?

After all IDE evolutions (all platforms on topic are changed) of this year, i'm looking to understand what is the state of technology for those platforms.

What are strengths and weaknesses of each ones? There are some limitations of one of those approach?

I have a good experience on C# and Javascript, than there are no programmatic language influence that could lean to one side.

Xamarin 2.0 vs Appcelerator Titanium vs PhoneGap

Is there any way using Xamarin Forms (not Android or iOS specific) to have a pop-up, like Android does with Toast, that needs no user interaction and goes away after a (short) period of time?

From searching around all I'm seeing are alerts that need user clicks to go away.

Toast equivalent for Xamarin Forms

How to terminate a Xamarin application from any of the activities?

I have tried both System.Environment.Exit(0) and System.Environment.Exit(1) as well as Finish() and killing all the activities.

It still opens one blank page with default activity name and a black screen.

How to terminate a Xamarin application?

I am starting to learn Xamarin, so I am a noob.

I am trying to show a SnackBar or Toast using the Xamarin.CommunityToolkit.Extensions NuGet Package.

I can't seem to find a way to show a Toast or Snackbar in the ViewModel. The only way I found to display it was in the View.xaml.cs.

I created a method ShowToast() in my View.xaml.cs. I would like to know how do I call the ShowToast() method in my ViewModel.cs?

Call method in View from ViewModel

I'm a 4th year student and I want to finish my work. I'm having a problem after I updated the Visual Studio. I always get the error "Unknown MSBuild failure". I think it had a problem of its version, I tried to find the previous releases that are compatible but it seems I can't find the right one.

What Visual Studio compatible for MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2010)? 

Shell.Current.Navigation.PushAsync(new XampelPage());


is it possible in the new Page to see the Page that pushed it there? For example if the Background is transparent, is there an way to show it in the Background?

Is it possible to see the page below in an Xamarin Shell Stack?

I have tried to take a picture from back and front camera and send it with email with Xamarin without user will need to click on any button like picture button.

Is it possible to take a picture from back and front camera without any user click with Xamarin??

Take a picture without click with Xamarin

I am creating a xamarin form app which require user location after every 10 meter. I am able to get location when app is running in foreground but unable to get location when app get into background 

You can do it with device timer. The timer will run periodically & will check for location updates and notify if location updated. I have used Xam.Plugins.Notifier to generate local notification on location update.

public partial class MainPage : ContentPage
{
    Location oldLocation = null;
    CancellationTokenSource cts;
    public MainPage()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
        Device.StartTimer(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10), () =>
        {
            GetCurrentLocation();
            return true;
        });
    }

    protected async override void OnAppearing()
    {
        base.OnAppearing();
        await GetCurrentLocation();
    }

    async Task GetCurrentLocation()
    {
        try
        {
            var request = new GeolocationRequest(GeolocationAccuracy.Medium, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10));
            cts = new CancellationTokenSource();
            var location = await Geolocation.GetLocationAsync(request, cts.Token);

            if (location != null)
            {
                Debug.WriteLine($"Latitude: {location.Latitude}, Longitude: {location.Longitude}, Altitude: {location.Altitude}");
                if (oldLocation == null)
                {
                    oldLocation = location;
                    map.MoveToRegion(MapSpan.FromCenterAndRadius(
                   new Position(location.Latitude, location.Longitude), Distance.FromMiles(0.3)));
                }
                if (location.Latitude != oldLocation.Latitude || location.Longitude != oldLocation.Longitude)
                {
                    map.MoveToRegion(MapSpan.FromCenterAndRadius(
                   new Position(location.Latitude, location.Longitude), Distance.FromMiles(0.3)));

                    oldLocation = location;
                    double zoomLevel = 0.5;
                    double latlongDegrees = 360 / (Math.Pow(2, zoomLevel));
                    if (map.VisibleRegion != null)
                    {
                        map.MoveToRegion(new MapSpan(map.VisibleRegion.Center, latlongDegrees, latlongDegrees));
                    }

                    var placemarks = await Geocoding.GetPlacemarksAsync(location.Latitude, location.Longitude);
                    var placemark = placemarks?.FirstOrDefault();
                    if (placemark != null)


                    {
                        var geocodeAddress =
                            $"AdminArea:       {placemark.AdminArea}\n" +
                            $"CountryCode:     {placemark.CountryCode}\n" +
                            $"CountryName:     {placemark.CountryName}\n" +
                            $"FeatureName:     {placemark.FeatureName}\n" +
                            $"Locality:        {placemark.Locality}\n" +
                            $"PostalCode:      {placemark.PostalCode}\n" +
                            $"SubAdminArea:    {placemark.SubAdminArea}\n" +
                            $"SubLocality:     {placemark.SubLocality}\n" +
                            $"SubThoroughfare: {placemark.SubThoroughfare}\n" +
                            $"Location :       {placemark.Location}\n" +
                            $"Thoroughfare:    {placemark.Thoroughfare}\n";

                        Debug.WriteLine(geocodeAddress);
                    }
                    
                    CrossLocalNotifications.Current.Show("Location Updated", "You checked in to " + placemark.FeatureName + " " + placemark.Locality + " " + placemark.SubLocality, 101, DateTime.Now.AddSeconds(5));
                }
            }
        }
        catch (FeatureNotSupportedException)
        {
            // Handle not supported on device exception
        }
        catch (FeatureNotEnabledException)
        {
            // Handle not enabled on device exception
        }
        catch (PermissionException)
        {
            // Handle permission exception
        }
        catch (Exception)
        {
            // Unable to get location
        }
    }
}

Background Location Tracking for Android with Xamarin.Forms

I want to change placeholder position on focus in entry, place holder slide to up on top of the entry border with animation linear by using custom renderer, and can be avail to set margin and padding for placeholde 

how can i change placeholder position in xamarin from on focus

I made a small program using c# and winform. But I found out that some of the users had mac users. I am willing to recreate this program for mac users.

How can I create a desktop program for mac users in a Windows 10 visual studio c# environment?

Does it work on Windows and mac at the same time if it is made into a WPF.net core program?

If I make it Xamarin, does it work on Windows and mac at the same time?

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