Building mobile apps

Before you begin, check out the system requirements and installation instructions to make sure everything's ready to go.

Build your first app

If you'd like to build an app using native UI technologies (like Android XML or Xcode Storyboards), try one of these platform-specific guides:

Get started with mobile development

To learn more about how Xamarin works, and how to approach mobile app development projects, read the guides below:

What is Xamarin?

This document explains how Xamarin works at a high-level and links through to the getting-started guides for Xamarin.Forms, Android, and iOS.

Mobile software development lifecycle

This article discusses the software development lifecycle with respect to mobile applications, and discusses some of the considerations required when building mobile projects. For developers wishing to just jump right in and start building, this guide can be skipped and read later for a more complete understanding of mobile development.

Building cross-platform applications

By choosing Xamarin and keeping a few things in mind when you design and develop your mobile applications, you can realize tremendous code sharing across mobile platforms, reduce your time to market, leverage existing talent, meet customer demand for mobile access, and reduce cross-platform complexity. This document outlines key guidelines to realizing these advantages for utility and productivity applications.

Introducing Visual Studio for Mac

Learn more about Visual Studio for Mac, the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for macOS.

Get started video

Building Your First Xamarin.Forms App with Xamarin for Visual Studio