Cross-platform mobile development in Visual Studio

You can build apps for Android, iOS, and Windows devices by using Visual Studio. As you design your app, use tools in Visual Studio to easily add connected services such as Microsoft 365, Azure App Service, and Application Insights.

Build your apps by using C# and the .NET Framework, HTML and JavaScript, or C++. Share code, strings, images, and in some cases even the user interface.

If you want to build a game or immersive graphical app, install Visual Studio tools for Unity and enjoy all of the powerful productivity features of Visual Studio with Unity, the popular cross-platform game/graphics engine and development environment for apps that run on iOS, Android, Windows, and other platforms.

Build an app for Android, iOS, and Windows (.NET Framework)

With Visual Studio Tools for Xamarin, you can target Android, iOS, and Windows in the same solution, sharing code and even UI.

Learn more
Install Visual Studio (VisualStudio.com)
Learn about Xamarin in Visual Studio (VisualStudio.com)
Xamarin mobile app development documentation
DevOps with Xamarin apps
Learn about Universal Windows apps in Visual Studio (VisualStudio.com)
Learn about the similarities between Swift and C# (download.microsoft.com)

Target Android, iOS, and Windows from a single code base

You can build native apps for Android, iOS, and Windows by using C# or F# (Visual Basic is not supported at this time). To get started, install Visual Studio, select the Mobile Development with .NET option in the installer.

If you already have Visual Studio installed, re-run the Visual Studio Installer and select the same Mobile Development with .NET option for Xamarin (as above).

When you’re done, project templates appear in the New Project dialog box. The easiest way to find Xamarin templates is to just search on «Xamarin.»

Xamarin exposes the native functionality of Android, iOS, and Windows as .NET classes and methods. This means your apps have full access to native APIs and native controls, and they’re just as responsive as apps written in the native platform languages.

After you create a project, you’ll leverage all of the productivity features of Visual Studio. For example, you’ll use a designer to create your pages, and use IntelliSense to explore the native API’s of the mobile platforms. When you’re ready to run your app and see how it looks, you can use the Android SDK emulator and run Windows apps natively. You can also use tethered Android and Windows devices directly. For iOS projects, connect to a networked Mac and start the iOS emulator from Visual Studio, or connect to a tethered device.

Design one set of pages that render across all devices by using Xamarin.Forms

Depending on the complexity of your apps design, you might consider building it by using Xamarin.Forms templates in the Mobile Apps group of project templates. Xamarin.Forms is a UI toolkit that lets you create a single interface that you can share across Android, iOS, and Windows. When you compile a Xamarin.Forms solution, you’ll get an Android app, an iOS app, and a Windows app. For more details, see Learn about mobile development with Xamarin and the Xamarin.Forms documentation.

Share code between Android, iOS, and Windows apps

If you’re not using Xamarin.Forms and choose to design for each platform individually, you can share most of your non-UI code between platform projects (Android, iOS, and Windows). This includes any business logic, cloud integration, database access, or any other code that targets the .NET Framework. The only code that you can’t share is code that targets a specific platform.

You can share your code by using a shared project, a Portable Class Library project, or both. You might find that some code fits best in a shared project, and some code makes more sense inside a Portable Class Library project.

Learn more
Sharing Code Options (Xamarin)
Code sharing options with .NET

Target Windows 10 devices

If you want to create a single app that targets the full breadth of Windows 10 devices, create a universal Windows app. You’ll design the app by using a single project and your pages will render properly no matter what device is used to view them.

Start with a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app project template. Design your pages visually, and then open them in a preview window to see how they appear for various types of devices. If you don’t like how a page appears on a device, you can optimize the page to better fit the screen size, resolution, or various orientations such as landscape or portrait mode. You can do all of that by using intuitive tool windows and easily accessible menu options in Visual Studio. When you’re ready to run your app and step through your code, you’ll find all of the device emulators and simulators for different types of devices together in one drop-down list that is located on the Standard toolbar.

Learn more
Intro to the Universal Windows Platform
Create your first app
Develop apps for the Universal Windows Platform (UWP)

Build an app for Android, iOS, and Windows (HTML/JavaScript)

If you’re a web developer, and you’re familiar with HTML and JavaScript, you can target Windows, Android, and iOS by using Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova. These apps can target all three platforms and you can build them by using the skills and processes that you’re most familiar with.

Apache Cordova is a framework that includes a plug-in model. This plug-in model provides a single JavaScript API that you can use to access the native device capabilities of all three platforms (Android, iOS, and Windows).

Because these APIs are cross-platform, you can share most of what you write between all three platforms. This reduces your development and maintenance costs. Also, there’s no need to start from scratch. If you’ve created other types of web applications, you can share those files with your Cordova app without having to modify or redesign them in any way.

To get started, install Visual Studio and choose the Mobile Development with Javascript feature during setup. The Cordova tools automatically install all third-party software that’s required to build your multi-platform app.

After you’ve installed the extension, open Visual Studio and create a Blank App (Apache Cordova) project. Then, you can develop your app by using JavaScript or Typescript. You can also add plug-ins to extend the functionality of your app, and APIs from plug-ins appear in IntelliSense as you write code.

When you’re ready to run your app and step through your code, choose an emulator, such as the Apache Ripple emulator or Android Emulator, a browser, or a device that you’ve connected directly to your computer. Then, start your app. If you’re developing your app on a Windows PC, you can even run it on that. All of these options are built into Visual Studio as part of the Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova.

Project templates for creating Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps are still available in Visual Studio so feel free to use them if you plan to target only Windows devices. If you decide to target Android and iOS later, you can always port your code to a Cordova project.

Learn more
Install Visual Studio (VisualStudio.com)
Get started with Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova
Learn about the Visual Studio Emulator for Android (VisualStudio.com)

Build an app for Android, iOS, and Windows (C++)

First, install Visual Studio and the Mobile Development with C++ workload. Then, you can build a native activity application for Android, or an app that targets Windows or iOS. You can target Android, iOS, and Windows in the same solution if you want, and then share code between them by using a cross-platform static or dynamic shared library.

If you need to build an app for Android that requires any sort of advanced graphics manipulation, such as a game, you can use C++ to do it. Start with the Native Activity Application (Android) project. This project has full support for the Clang toolchain.

When you’re ready to run your app and see how it looks, use the Android Emulator. It’s fast, reliable, and easy to install and configure.

You can also build an app that targets the full breadth of Windows 10 devices by using C++ and a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app project template. Read more about this in the Target Windows 10 devices section that appears earlier in this topic.

You can share C++ code between Android, iOS, and Windows by creating a static or dynamic shared library.

You can consume that library in a Windows, iOS, or Android project, like the ones described earlier in this section. You can also consume it in an app that you build by using Xamarin, Java, or any language that lets you invoke functions in an unmanaged DLL.

As you write code in these libraries, you can use IntelliSense to explore the native APIs of the Android and Windows platforms. These library projects are fully integrated with the Visual Studio debugger so you can set breakpoints, step through code, and find and fix issues by using all of the advanced features of the debugger.

Learn more
Download Visual Studio (VisualStudio.com)
Install cross-platform mobile development with C++
Learn more about using C++ to target multiple platforms (VisualStudio.com)
Install what you need, and then create a C++ native activity application for Android
Learn more about sharing C++ code with Android and Windows apps (VisualStudio.com)
Cross-platform mobile development examples for C++

Build a cross-platform game for Android, iOS, and Windows by using Visual Studio tools for Unity

Visual Studio Tools for Unity is a free extension for Visual Studio that integrates Visual Studio’s powerful code editing, productivity, and debugging tools with Unity, the popular cross-platform gaming/graphics engine and development environment for immersive apps that target Windows, iOS, Android, and other platforms including the web.

With Visual Studio Tools for Unity (VSTU), you can use Visual Studio to write game and editor scripts in C# and then use its powerful debugger to find and fix errors. The latest release of VSTU brings support for Unity 2018.1 and includes syntax coloring for Unity’s ShaderLab shader language, better synchronization with Unity, richer debugging, and improved code generation for the MonoBehavior wizard. VSTU also brings your Unity project files, console messages, and the ability to start your game into Visual Studio so you can spend less time switching to and from the Unity Editor while writing code.

Building Java apps for Android

To build your first Android app, follow these steps:

1. Connect to your repository service account (GitHub, Bitbucket, VSTS, Azure DevOps).
2. Select a repository and a branch where your app lives.
3. Choose the Android project you want to build.
4. Set up your first build.

For the app to run on a real device, the build needs to be code signed with a valid certificate.

1. Linking your repository

You must connect to your repository service account if you haven’t already. Once your account is connected, select the repository where your Android project is located. To set up a build for a repository, you need admin and pull permission for it.

2. Selecting a branch

After selecting a repository, select the branch you want to build. By default, all the active branches will be listed.

3. Setting up your first build

Before your first build, the Android project needs to be configured.

3.1. Build triggers

By default, a new build is triggered every time a developer pushes to a configured branch. This is referred to as «Continuous Integration». If you prefer to trigger a new build manually, you can change this setting in the configuration pane.

3.2. Build variant

The available build variants will populate from the Build Types and Product Flavors specified in the build.gradle (app level) file. Select which build variant should be built.

App Center Build supports finding build variants as the combination of a Build Type (debug, release or custom defined) and one of your gradle declared Product Flavors. Detection of Flavor Dimensions (combinations of multiple product flavors) isn’t supported at this time.

3.3. Build Android App Bundle (.aab)

The Android App Bundle is a distribution format that’s uploaded to the Play Store and used to generate optimized APKs for specific devices. You can find out more about the Android App Bundle in the official Android documentation.

Toggle the option for Android App Bundle to produce an .aab in addition to the .apk . If the build.gradle (app level) file contains the android.bundle block, this option will already be on.

3.4. Increment version number

When enabled, the version code in the AndroidManifest.xml of your app automatically increments for each build. The change happens during the actual build and won’t be committed to your repository.

3.5. Code signing

A successful build will produce an .apk file and an additional .aab file if enabled. To release the build to the Play Store, it needs to be signed with a valid certificate stored in a keystore. To sign the builds produced from a branch, enable code signing in the configuration pane, upload your keystore to your repository, and provide the relevant credentials in the configuration pane. You can read more about code signing in App Center’s Android code signing documentation. The .aab will be signed using the same credentials as the .apk .

3.6. Launch your successful build on a real device

Use your newly produced APK file to test if your app starts on a real device. This adds approximately 10 more minutes to the total build time. Read more about how to configure launch tests.

3.7. Configure from the build.gradle (app level) File

Specific information about your build will be collected from your Gradle file including dependencies, build tools version, build types, and product flavors.

3.8. Distribute the build

You can configure each successful build from a branch to be distributed to a previously created distribution group or a store destination. You can add a new distribution group or configure a store connection from within the Distribute service. There’s always a default distribution group called «Collaborators» that includes all the users who have access to the app.

If distributing to the Google Play Store, an Android App Bundle ( .aab ) is preferred and will be distributed if enabled. For App Center distribution groups and Intune store destinations, a regular .apk will be used even if an .aab is also generated.

4. Build results

After a build is triggered, it can be in these states:

• queued — the build is in a queue waiting for resources to be freed up.
• building — the app is building and running related tasks.
• succeeded — the build is completed successfully.
• failed — the build completed, but it failed. You can download and inspect the build log for troubleshooting.
• canceled — the build was canceled by user action, or it timed out.

4.1. Build logs

For a completed build (succeeded or failed), download the logs to understand more about how the build went. App Center provides an archive with the following files:

The build step-specific logs (located in the build/ directory of the archive) are helpful for troubleshooting and understanding in what step and why the build failed.

4.2. The app package (APK)

The APK is a package that contains the Android app and assets. If the build is correctly signed, the APK can be installed on a real device and deployed to the Play Store. If the build hasn’t been signed, the APK can be run on an emulator or used for other purposes.

4.3. Building multiple APKs

If your app configuration builds multiple APKs, you need to build a universal APK too. Our build system works with one main APK file and will ignore all APKs specific to a certain CPU ABI or screen density. To learn more about APK splits and building a universal APK, read the ABI split guide.

4.4. The deobfuscation-mapping file (mapping.txt)

The mapping.txt file contains information on how to map obfuscated stack traces for the app back to the original class and method names.

• If you’ve previously integrated the App Center SDK in your app with the crash reporting module enabled and use either Proguard or R8 to minify and obfuscate the app binary, the crash reporting service requires this mapping.txt file for a build to display human readable (deobfuscated) crash reports.
• If you’ve previously integrated another SDK for crash reporting purposes in your app (for example, HockeyApp SDK), the corresponding service requires the mapping.txt file to display readable crash reports.

5. Supported versions and requirements

The minimum version supported to build Android apps is 7.0 (API level 24). Android apps can have a lower minimum API level required to run, but must target at least API level 24.

Apps must build with Gradle and the Android Gradle plugin to be configured correctly. Your repository needs to include a Gradle wrapper.