Building Uno.UI for macOS using Visual Studio for Mac

Building Uno.UI for the macOS platform using vs4mac requires Visual Studio for Mac 8.1 or later.

Steps:

  • Make sure to create the crosstargeting_override.props file and set UnoTargetFrameworkOverride to xamarinmac20.

  • Open Uno.UI-vs4mac.sln to for iOS/Android/macOS heads or Uno.UI-vs4mac-macOS-only.sln for macOS only.

  • Set the SamplesApp.macOS project as the Startup Project.

  • Launch the application.

Support for building the Uno.UI solution is still somewhat unstable, this is a list of known issues and troubleshooting steps:

  • You may get a message like Error while trying to load the project '/Users/user/src/uno/build/Uno.UI.Build.csproj': Index has to be between upper and lower bound of the array. when you open the solution. You can safely ignore this error.

  • If NuGet restore fails when building from the IDE, or if it gets stuck for some other reason, try building from the command line. Open a terminal session in the uno/src folder and use the following command:

    msbuild /m /r SamplesApp/SamplesApp.macOS/SamplesApp.macOS.csproj

    Then reopen Visual Studio and try to launch the sample again.

  • If you get an error when building the Uno.UI.Lottie project complaining about typescript errors, you may need to install Node.js on your Mac. The easiest way to do this is to install the Homebrew package manager and then use Homebrew to install Node.

Beware: VS for Mac currently makes many unwanted "changes" to the .csproj files (like adding package version numbers explicitly, switching attributes to elements and vice-versa). Please do not commit these changes in your Pull Requests.