Get Started on Visual Studio 2022

This getting started will guide you through setting up your environment to create Uno Platform applications using C# and .NET with Visual Studio 2022.

Tip

If you want to use another environment or IDE, see our general getting started.

Install Visual Studio with Workloads

To create Uno Platform applications you will need Visual Studio 2022 17.8 or later:

ASP.NET and web development workload installed (for WebAssembly development)
.NET Multi-platform App UI development workload installed (for iOS, Android, Mac Catalyst development).
.NET desktop development workload installed (for Skia-based targets development)

Important

Uno Platform 5.0 does not support Xamarin projects anymore. To build Xamarin-based projects in Visual Studio 2022, in Visual Studio's installer Individual components tab, search for Xamarin and select Xamarin and Xamarin Remoted Simulator. See this section on migrating Xamarin projects to .NET 6.

Check your environment

Open a command-line prompt, Windows Terminal if you have it installed, or else Command Prompt or Windows Powershell from the Start menu.
Setup uno.check by:
- Installing the tool:
```
dotnet tool install -g uno.check
```
- Updating the tool, if you previously installed it:
```
dotnet tool update -g uno.check
```
Run the tool from the command prompt with the following command:
```
uno-check
```
Follow the instructions indicated by the tool.

Install the Uno Platform Extension

Launch Visual Studio 2022, then click Continue without code. Click Extensions -> Manage Extensions from the Menu Bar.
In the Extension Manager expand the Online node and search for Uno, install the Uno Platform extension or download it from the Visual Studio Marketplace, then restart Visual Studio.

Additional Setup for Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

It is possible to build and debug Skia+GTK projects under WSL, if you choose to do so.

To setup your environment for WSL:

Install WSL Ubuntu 22.04 or later
Install the prerequisites for Linux mentioned below, in your installed distribution using the Ubuntu shell

Note

Running Uno Platform apps using WSL makes use of WSLg's support for Wayland.

In order to run Skia+GTK heads, you will need to make sure to install the GTK3 runtime.

Tip

Once the GTK3 runtime is installed, you will need restart your IDE for the changes to take effect.

To install on CI using Azure Pipelines, use the following step:

steps:
  - powershell: |
        $source = "https://github.com/tschoonj/GTK-for-Windows-Runtime-Environment-Installer/releases/download/2020-07-15/gtk3-runtime-3.24.20-2020-07-15-ts-win64.exe"
        $destination = "gtk3-runtime.exe"
        Invoke-WebRequest $source -OutFile $destination
        Start-Process -FilePath "gtk3-runtime.exe" -Wait -PassThru -ArgumentList /S
        Write-Host "##vso[task.setvariable variable=PATH;]${env:PATH};C:\Program Files\GTK3-Runtime Win64\bin";

    displayName: Install GTK3 runtime

Install GTK3:

sudo apt update
sudo apt-get install gtk+3.0 mesa-utils libgl1-mesa-glx ttf-mscorefonts-installer

Update system and packages
```
pacman -Syu
```

Install the necessary dependencies

sudo pacman -S gtk3 dotnet-targeting-pack dotnet-sdk dotnet-host dotnet-runtime mono python mono-msbuild ninja gn aspnet-runtime

You may also need to install the Microsoft fonts manually.

If you are using Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), you can find specific instructions in the following video:

Next Steps

You're all set! You can create your first Uno Platform app.