At this morning’s Connect(); 2016 keynote, Nat Friedman and James Montemagno introduced Visual Studio for Mac, the newest member of the Visual Studio family.Visual Studio for Mac is a developer environment optimized for building mobile and cloud apps with Xamarin and .NET. It is a one-stop shop for .NET development on the Mac, including Android, iOS, and .NET Core technologies. Sporting a native user interface, Visual Studio for Mac integrates all of the tools you need to create, debug, test, and publish mobile and server applications without compromise, including state of the art APIs and UI designers for Android and iOS.
Both C# and F# are supported out of the box and our project templates provide developers with a skeleton that embodies the best practices to share code across mobile front ends and your backend. Our new Connected Application template gives you both your Android and iOS front ends, as well as its complementary .NET Core-powered backend.
Now we have two Visual Studio versions (Visual Studio for Mac, Visual Studio Code) that can directly install on the Mac (macOS), refer to your description, it looks like you installed the Visual Studio for Mac, it is a developer environment optimized for building mobile and cloud apps with Xamarin and.NET.
Once you’re up and running, you’ll find the same Roslyn-powered compiler, IntelliSense code completion, and refactoring experience you would expect from a Visual Studio IDE. And, since Visual Studio for Mac uses the same MSBuild solution and project format as Visual Studio, developers working on Mac and Windows can share projects across Mac and Windows transparently.
With multi-process debugging, you can use Visual Studio for Mac to debug both your front end application as well as your backend simultaneously.
Visual Studio for Mac provides an amazing experience for creating mobile apps, from integrated designers to the code editing experience to the packaging and publishing tools. It is complemented by:
- The full power of the beloved-by-millions C# 7 programming language
- Complete .NET APIs for Android, iOS, tvOS, watchOS, and macOS
- The Xamarin.Forms API abstraction to maximize code sharing
- Access to thousands of .NET libraries on NuGet.org to accelerate your mobile development
- Highly optimized native code backed by the LLVM optimizing compiler
But we know apps don’t stop at the client, which is why I am so excited about what Visual Studio for Mac brings to backend development, as well.
Check out the release notes for a complete list of what’s included in this product.
It is rare these days for mobile applications to run in isolation; most of them have a backend that does the heavy lifting and connects users.
You can use .NET Core to build your own backend services and deploy these to your Windows or Linux servers on Visual Studio for Mac, while the project templates will get you up and running with an end-to-end configuration.
Additionally developers can easily integrate Azure mobile services into their application for things like push notifications, data storage, and user accounts and authentication with Azure App Services. This is available in the new “Connected Services” project node.
Whether you are rolling out a custom backend with ASP.NET Core, or consuming pre-packaged Azure services, Visual Studio for Mac will be there for you.
Check out the release notes for a complete list of what’s included in this product.
Today we released the first preview of Visual Studio for Mac, a member of the Visual Studio family, and the story is just beginning. In the coming months we will be working with the Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code teams to bring more features that you love to the Mac, from advanced Web editing capabilities to support for more programming languages via the Server Language Protocol.
Visit the Visual Studio for Mac page and take it for a spin. We look forward to hearing your feedback!
| Miguel de Icaza, Distinguished Engineer, Mobile Developer Tools @migueldeicaza 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. |
To start developing native, cross-platform .NET apps on macOS, install Visual Studio 2019 for Mac following the steps below.
Requirements
- A Mac with macOS High Sierra 10.12 or above.
To build Xamarin apps for iOS or macOS, you'll also need:
- Xcode 10.0 or above. The latest stable version is usually recommended.
- An Apple ID. If you don't have an Apple ID already you can create a new one at https://appleid.apple.com. It's necessary to have an Apple ID for installing and signing into Xcode.
Installation instructions
Download the installer from the Visual Studio for Mac download page.
Once the download is complete, click the VisualStudioforMacInstaller.dmg to mount the installer, then run it by double-clicking the arrow logo:
You may be presented with a warning about the application being downloaded from the Internet. Click Open.
Wait while the installer checks your system:
An alert will appear asking you to acknowledge the privacy and license terms. Follow the links to read them, then press Continue if you agree:
The list of available workloads is displayed. Select the components you wish to use:
If you do not wish to install all platforms, use the guide below to help you decide which platforms to install:
- Apps using Xamarin:
- Xamarin.Forms – Select Android and iOS platforms.
- iOS only – Select iOS platform (Note that you will need to install Xcode).
- Android only – Select Android platform (Note that you should also select the relevant dependencies).
- Mac only – Select macOS platform (Note that you will need to install Xcode).
- Fully cross-platform Xamarin apps – Select Android, iOS, and macOS platforms.
- .NET Core applications – Select .NET Core platform.
- ASP.NET Core Web Applications – Select .NET Core platform.
- Cross-platform Unity Game Development – No additional platforms need to be installed beyond Visual Studio for Mac. Refer to the Unity setup guide for more information on installing the Unity extension.
- Apps using Xamarin:
After you have made your selections, press the Install button.
The installer will display progress as it downloads and installs Visual Studio for Mac and the selected workloads. You might be prompted to enter your password to grant the privileges necessary for installation.
If you have network trouble while installing in a corporate environment, review the installing behind a firewall or proxy instructions.
Learn more about the changes in the release notes.
Note
If you chose not to install a platform or tool during the original installation (by unselecting it in step #6), you must run the installer again if you wish to add the components later.
Install Visual Studio for Mac behind a firewall or proxy server
To install Visual Studio for Mac behind a firewall, certain endpoints must be made accessible in order to allow downloads of the required tools and updates for your software.
Configure your network to allow access to the following locations:
Next steps
Installing Visual Studio for Mac allows you to start writing code for your apps. The following guides are provided to guide you through the next steps of writing and deploying your projects.
iOS
- Device Provisioning(To run your application on device).
Android
Free Download Visual Studio For Windows 8
.NET Core apps, ASP.NET Core web apps, Unity game development
Visual Studio For Mac Vs Windows
For other Workloads, refer to the Workloads page.