Xamarin.Forms Are Available Free-of-Charge, Transition to Multi-Platform App UI (.NET MAUI)

If you’re using Xamarin.Forms today, MAUI should be a painless transition as it represents the evolution of Xamarin.Forms – the two platforms have many similarities (more below).

.NET MAUI simplifies the choices for .NET developers, providing a single stack that supports all modern workloads: Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows. The native features of each platform and UI control are within reach in a simple, cross-platform API for you to deliver no-compromise user experiences while sharing even more code than before.

As you may already know, Microsoft is set to ship .NET MAUI in November. Like you, we can’t wait for the official release and are working to port our existing suite of Xamarin.Forms UI controls to the .NET MAUI platform. For more information, please refer to .NET MAUI - FREE Early Access Preview of Multi-Platform App UI Controls (v21.2).

If you are curious about technical details, here is our experience with MAUI. We forked https://github.com/dotnet/maui and explored standard MAUI "Handlers" such as Label, Button, etc. Then, we implemented a MAUI “Handler” for our chart control (see the screenshot below). Good news is that most of our native control internals remain unchanged (as expected). To complete the MAUI migration process, we expect to use the same technique - convert our Xamarin.Forms "Renderers" to MAUI "Handlers”. BTW, we love the new "Handler" technique and interaction with objects using interfaces in MAUI. The only major things missing at this point are rich Visual Studio support and debugging capabilities on Mac, but that is coming in the future.

Overall, our MAUI experience so far is very close to that promised by Microsoft:

Xamarin.Forms developers will hit the ground running with new projects in .NET MAUI, using all the same controls and APIs they have grown to know and love. As we get closer to the .NET MAUI launch, In order to help developers make a smooth transition of existing apps to .NET MAUI we intend to provide try-convert support and migration guides similar to what we have today for migrating to .NET Core.

If you are currently using Xamarin.Forms, considering MAUI, or just investigating your options, feel free to comment below, we’ll be happy to follow-up. And before you ask, we have not finalized our product delivery model for MAUI – we may continue to offer our MAUI controls free of charge or we may bundle them with an existing DevExpress Subscription.

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Should you have any questions about our plans for .NET MAUI, feel free to email info@devexpress.com. Thanks for considering DevExpress for your development needs.