One common query I get all the time from developers is how to get a unique device or application identifier for their mobile app. After deciding to not include an API for this in Xamarin.Essentials we heard a lot of different use cases for it including:
Client/Server Communication Login Validation In-App Purchase Verification Licensing Purposes The next obvious question that you may have is why didn't we include it …
James Montemagno
This year I have made a big push towards making Visual Studio Team Services my new continuous everything for my mobile apps, libraries, and any other project that I work on. While Azure DevOps (VSTS) has a lot of built in tasks for mobile applications, there are still a few essential things missing that would really make it a joy to use. The top that stuck out was having the ability to easily bump the version/build …
James Montemagno
I think we all can agree that attempting to do beta testing on iOS is pretty terrible. You can't side load apps easily, provisioning profiles are terrible, and manually adding people to TestFlight is no fun. All I want to do is get my app in users hands! Why do I have to go through so much stress? Well you don't, because fastlane comes in to save the day just like it simplifies provisioning in Visual Studio for Mac.
James Montemagno
Last week Visual Studio 2017 version 15.4 and VS for Mac 7.2 were released into the stable channel. They include the very first release of the Xamarin Live Player capabilities in Visual Studios. This means you can simply update Visual Studio, turn on Xamarin Live Player (Preview), and get started visualizing your mobile apps with nothing more than VS and your iOS or Android device!
James Montemagno
It is update season for iOS and Android applications with new versions of the operating systems being released. Today, I was on my way to push out a new version of the Xamarin Live Player to Test Flight users and hit this nasty error:
Missing Marketing Icon. iOS Apps must include a 1024x1024px Marketing Icon in PNG format. Apps that do not include the Marketing Icon cannot be submitted for App Review or Beta App …
James Montemagno
The Connectivity Plugin for Xamarin is my second most installed NuGet package with nearly 600,000 installs at time of writing this. It is easy to see why as it gives developers the ability to check connectivity on any platform with a single line of code, subscribe to events, and see what the current connection type is, with a complete cross platform API for iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows.
James Montemagno