Get Started on Visual Studio 2022 For Mac

While it is easier to create apps using Uno Platform on Windows, you can also create all but UWP/WinUI apps on your Mac.

Prerequisites

Finalize your environment

  1. Open a Terminal.

  2. a. Install the tool by running the following command from the command prompt:

    dotnet tool install -g uno.check

    b. To update the tool, if you already have an existing one:

    dotnet tool update -g uno.check

  3. Run the tool from the command prompt with the following command:

    uno-check

    If the above command fails, use the following:

    ~/.dotnet/tools/uno-check

  4. Follow the instructions indicated by the tool

You can find additional information about uno-check here.

Installing the dotnet new templates

In order to create a new Uno Project, you'll need to install the dotnet new Uno Platform templates.

Create a new project using the IDE

  1. To create a new project, from the command line, where src is your own development folder.

    cd src
dotnet new unoapp -o MyApp01

  2. Once created, open the MyApp-vsmac.slnf file

    • This slnf is called a solution filter, which automatically excludes projects which are not compatible with Visual Studio 2022 for Mac.
    • If you have a warning symbol on your iOS project, make sure you have the minimum version of Xcode installed. update-xcode\

To update, go to Visual Studio > Preferences > Projects > SDK Locations > Apple and select Xcode 13.3 or higher. Restart Visual Studio.

  1. You can now run on iOS, Android, macOS, and Skia.GTK projects by changing your startup project and starting the debugger.
Note

You will not be able to build the UWP and WPF projects on a Mac. All changes to this project must be made on Windows.

Important

As of .NET 6 Mobile RC3, the macOS head can fail to build with issues related to the AOT compiler. You can run the Catalyst app on a mac.

Create other projects types using the command line

You can create a new Uno Platform solution with the following terminal command: bash dotnet new unoapp -o MyProject --wasm=false

Once created, you can open it using Visual Studio 2022 for Mac.

Build and Run for WebAssembly

Building for WebAssembly takes a few more steps:

  1. Set MyProject.Wasm to startup project
  2. Build the project
  3. In the terminal, navigate to your build output path. This will typically be: MyProject.Wasm > bin > Debug > net7.0 > dist
  4. Install dotnet serve: 
    dotnet tool install -g dotnet-serve
  5. Once installed type dotnet serve (or ~/.dotnet/tools/dotnet-serve).
  6. Navigate to the URL presented by the tool to run your application

Using Visual Studio Code snippets to add new XAML files

There is no similar extension at the moment available for Visual Studio for Mac, so we invite you to use the Uno Platform Visual Studio Code Extension. This extension comes with snippets to easily add new files like Page, UserControl, and ResourceDictionary in addition to other additional useful snippets to enhance your coding experience on Mac for the XAML files.

Visit our getting started section with Visual Studio Code for more details.

You're all set! You can now head to our tutorials on how to work on your Uno Platform app.

Troubleshooting

SDK iOS version incompatible with Xcode version

Sometimes the SDK iOS version is incompatible with the Xcode version. To workaround this issue you can open a terminal, and type the following command:

sudo dotnet workload update

iOS Simulators do not appear

The issue is related to Visual Studio for Mac that changes a general TFM, like net7.0-ios, to a version-specific TFM, like net7.0-ios16.1, which causes Visual Studio to not be able to load the list of simulators. A workaround for this will be to roll back to net7.0-ios for the TargetFrameworks and you will be able to see the simulators again. To do that, you will need to edit the NameOfMyProject.iOS.csproj or NameOfMyProject.Mobile.csproj file by right-clicking the associated project head, and selecting Edit Project File.

Getting Help

If you continue experiencing issues with Uno Platform, please visit our GitHub Discussions or Discord - #uno-platform channel where our engineering team and community will be able to help you.