How To Use Visual Studio For Mac

Mac computers don’t support most Windows applications, including Visual Studio. There are similar compilers that run natively on Mac, like Xamarin Studio and Visual Studio Code. However, the easiest and most efficient method for using Visual Studio on a Mac is through use of a Parallels virtual machine. At the core of effective application development is a thorough knowledge of Visual Studio Mac. In this course, Visual Studio for Mac, you will learn how to work with VS Mac to produce enterprise-quality software.

In November, we announced Visual Studio for Mac, a fully featured IDE that we hope will help every Mac developer create mobile and cloud applications. We started with a solid foundation for mobile development using Xamarin, and cloud development using .NET Core.

Over the past few months we have been working on porting C# code that was originally designed to work on Windows to the Mac. Luckily for us, the architecture of Visual Studio is so good that reusing the code has been a breeze. This has been helped by both the love and dedication that our Mac and Windows teams have, to create a great developer experience for our users.

Here are some of the changes that we have made since then.

Web Editing

In the latest release, we have completed the work to bring the rich HTML, CSS and JSON editors to macOS. You will get the same code completion, indentation behavior, and validation that you get on Windows for those file formats. When you install the update today, you will get to enjoy the glory of an IDE with a state-of-the-art web editor.

.NET Core

We have polished and improved our .NET Core and ASP.NET Core support to make it even simpler to create your server code, either for your standalone web sites, or as a service backend for your mobile applications or your hosted services.

How

We have upgraded our debugger to make async debugging as natural and simple as regular code – just like you expect from Visual Studio on Windows.

Azure Publish

To complement our improved .NET Core support, you can now publish your applications directly to Azure from within Visual Studio for Mac. Using the same publishing profiles and commands that you are used to.

C# 7

We also introduced support for C# 7.0, a big upgrade with many language improvements that you will love. The support is what you expect from Visual Studio with refactoring tools, live code checking and great IntelliSense.

It is hard to pick favorite features in C# 7. I love pattern matching and I love the new native tuple support. Local functions, while not immediately obvious, has made some of my own code simpler and cleaner.

Support for the latest Apple and Google platforms

As you have come to expect from us, we deliver first-class support for the latest versions of Apple and Google operating systems – including the just updated versions of macOS, iOS, tvOS and watchOS.

Additionally, we are taking away some of the complexity involved in managing the signing certificates and provisioning profiles for your Apple-based applications, by integrating with the popular open source Fastlane project.

Accessibility

Visual Studio now integrates with Apple’s macOS accessibility platform. We are committed to making the entire IDE accessible and we are very happy with the first steps that we have taken in this space.

Testing

I hope that you take some time to try out the new features in Visual Studio for Mac and share your experiences with us. My team is committed to delivering developer tools that delight developers. We want to hear from you, and find out what parts of the experience can be improved and how we can make you more effective mobile and cloud developers.

If you already have Visual Studio for Mac Preview installed, make sure you update to the latest version from within the app. If you haven’t tried out a preview yet, head on over to VisualStudio.com to download the latest one.

Use Visual Studio for Mac’s “Report a Problem” or “Provide a Suggestion” dialog (within the Help menu) to provide feedback. Also, don’t forget about our Visual Studio and Visual Studio for Mac community forums, which provide a great place to leave feedback and learn from other developers.

Enjoy!

Miguel.

Miguel de Icaza, Distinguished Engineer, Mobile Developer Tools

Miguel is a Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft, focused on the mobile platform and creating delightful developer tools. With Nat Friedman, he co-founded both Xamarin in 2011 and Ximian in 1999. Before that, Miguel co-founded the GNOME project in 1997 and has directed the Mono project since its creation in 2001, including multiple Mono releases at Novell. Miguel has received the Free Software Foundation 1999 Free Software Award, the MIT Technology Review Innovator of the Year Award in 1999, and was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 innovators for the new century in September 2000.

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Apps built using Xamarin look and feel native, because they are.

Native User Interfaces

Apps built using Xamarin contain standard, native user interface controls. Apps not only look the way the end user expects, but they behave that way too.

Native API Access

Apps built using Xamarin have access to the full spectrum of functionality exposed by the underlying platform and device, including platform-specific capabilities like ARKit and Android Multi-Window mode.

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Native Performance

Apps built using Xamarin leverage platform-specific hardware acceleration, and are compiled for native performance. This can’t be achieved with solutions that interpret code at runtime.

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Single shared codebase for Android, iOS, and Windows

Share code everywhere. Use the same language, APIs and data structures for 75+% of app code across all mobile development platforms.

World-class IDEs on your preferred OS

Use Visual Studio, a fully-featured and extensible IDE on Windows. Or, use Visual Studio for Mac, a rich IDE for macOS. Both offer UI designers, efficient code editing, debugging and publishing tools, and more.

Tools, cloud services, support and training

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With a Visual Studio Standard or Annual Cloud subscription, you get additional features in your Visual Studio IDE, as well as benefits such as access to on-demand content from the Xamarin University curriculum, free tools and special offers, and up to $150 Azure credit each month. Members of the free Visual Studio Dev Essentials program also enjoy select content from Xamarin University.

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The Xamarin SDKs, Xamarin.Forms, and Mono runtime are open source on GitHub. We’re excited for your contributions!

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“With Visual Studio Tools for Xamarin, we deliver a native app experience, so it is easy and fun to use.”

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Free, fully-featured IDE for students, open-source and individual developers

How To Use Visual Studio

Professional developer tools, services, and subscription benefits for small teams

Visual Studio For Mac Download

End-to-end solution to meet demanding quality and scale needs of teams of all sizes