This question comes up from time to time, so I decided to answer this once and for all in an easy to share form: a blogpost. Read all about how to encode and decode Base64 images for viewing in .NET MAUI. Spoiler alert: this is not specific to .NET MAUI, you can also use this with Xamarin.Forms, or WinUI or WPF, or… Well, you get the idea! The sample code for this post is on my GitHub account: https://github.com/jfversluis/MauiBase64ImageSample What the Base64?! Base64 is a way to convert binary files, usually images, to text. That way you can easily store them in, for instance, a database. Fo ..read more

The other day an issue was opened on the .NET MAUI repository with the question: how do I customize the More title on the tab bar on Android? Since it’s not really that obvious, I’ll write about it here! What it’s all about When you add more than a certain number of tabs in a mobile app it will add a tab at the end which typically says something like “More”. In the case of Android, when you have more than 5 tabs, you will get 4 tabs which brings you to the content for each tab directly, the 5th tab will become the “More” tab and will show you a list of the remaining tabs you can go to. The Mor ..read more

Updating your .NET MAUI app from .NET 6 to .NET 7 is easy! In this post we’ll see what the process looks like. What’s New in .NET 7? There are many enhancements for .NET MAUI in .NET 7. First, a very much anticipated feature is .NET MAUI Maps. With Maps you can add a map in your iOS, macOS and Android applications. Additionally, a whole lot of features that are specific to the desktop went in. This of: tooltips, context menus, window sizes and positions and more. To top all of this off, there is a continuous focus on the performance of .NET MAUI apps and .NET 7 has a lot of those performance ..read more

The .NET MAUI Community Toolkit team has been hard at work to bring the MediaElement for playing videos to .NET MAUI. In this post, read all about the features and how to try it yourself, today! What is MediaElement? MediaElement has been the control for playing audio and video in Xamarin.Forms. Peter Foot from the community has been doing a great job implementing this for all platforms that were supported by Xamarin.Forms. However, time has gone by, platforms have newer features, obsoleted APIs, etc. and some features, like playing live streams, have simply never been implemented. Time to cha ..read more

Sometimes you just want to send the binaries to someone and not bother with a whole MSIX installer. In this post I will show you how to create a so-called unpackaged Windows app with .NET MAUI. Regular WinUI/Windows .NET MAUI App Distribution with MSIX Typically you want to use an MSIX to distribute your Windows app. By using an MSIX the prerequisites the user has to have installed will be checked and installed automatically and you will have a cool looking installer. Also, if you want to publish to the Microsoft Store, you will need to have an MSIX file. If you’re not going to publish to the ..read more

I ran into an issue the other day with the iOS Remote Simulator on Windows the other day while working on a .NET MAUI app. While deploying my app it kept looping with things like: Connecting to Mac…Checking Server…Connected… Coincidentally I landed on the Microsoft Docs page for it which showed me how to fix it, I thought I’d amplify that content a little! What is the iOS Remote Simulator? The iOS Remote Simulator is basically a remote desktop session that reflects the iOS Simulator screen on Windows. The iOS Simulator is only available on Mac together with XCode, but if you connect a Mac to y ..read more

When developing a .NET MAUI app for Windows, you might find yourself in a situation where you need to run your app elevated. Elevated meaning that you get the UAC dialog and the app gets more rights to your system. It’s not super straight-forward how to set it up, so here is a little blog post to guide you! A Word of Warning Before we begin, a couple of practical things. First: think very hard if this is something you will actually need. When in elevated mode your app can do a lot of potential harm. Think long and hard if there isn’t some way around what you’re trying to do. Second: this post ..read more

For the past 2 weeks I have been releasing videos that will help you build your very first .NET MAUI App. This .NET MAUI Crash Course is now available for everyone, completely free! What is .NET MAUI? .NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI for short) is a cross-platform framework for creating native mobile and desktop apps with C# and XAML. With .NET MAUI, you can create apps for iOS, Android, Windows and macOS. Our friends at Samsung even provided us with support for Tizen! The power of .NET MAUI lies within the fact that you can write your apps from a single codebase. Combine this with other ..read more

While figuring out how to publish macOS apps built with .NET MAUI I came across the error in the title. Turns out, there is an easy fix to this and it isn’t .NET MAUIs fault, in fact, this also works for non-.NET MAUI apps. Let’s dive in! What Causes This Error? First, let’s have a better look at the actual error, you can see a screenshot below. The application “{application name}” can’t be opened. error dialog From what I can tell, this is caused by macOS making the .app file not executable. This happens when you download a .app file from the internet it seems. The error is similar to somethi ..read more

At the moment I’m working on a little .NET MAUI Blazor app and out of the box the iOS target has a white status bar at the top. I’m no designer, but I don’t like how that looks. In this post I’ll show you how to add a nice status bar color, even when rotating the device! Problem: No Status Bar Color/Transparent Status Bar When you create a new .NET MAUI (Blazor) app there will be a white (or black when Dark Theme is enabled) bar on top of your screen. This really doesn’t have much to do with the fact that it’s .NET MAUI, this is just how iOS works. It’s not just white, it’s transparent even. I ..read more