During installation, the .NET Multi-platform App UI development workload should be selected. Using the link above should preselect all the prerequisites correctly, as shown on the following image:
Tooling support in Visual Studio is still in preview, so .NET MAUI is not available on Visual Studio 2022, just on Visual Studio 2022 Preview.
Already have Visual Studio 2022 Preview?
If you already have Visual Studio 2022 Preview, you can update your installation to add .NET MAUI support.
Select the Windows key, type Visual Studio Installer, and press Enter.
If prompted, allow the installer to update itself.
If an update for Visual Studio 2022 Preview is available, an Update button will be shown. Select it to update before modifying the installation.
Find your Visual Studio 2022 Preview installation and select Modify.
Select .NET Multi-platform App UI development.
Select the Modify button.
Create your app
Create a new .NET MAUI app:
Open Visual Studio 2022 Preview.
Select the Create a new project button.
Select MAUI from the Project type drop-down.
Select the .NET MAUI App template and select the Next button.
Enter MyFirstMauiApp as the project name and select the Create button.
Visual Studio creates the new project. If you get a Windows Security Alert warning you about the firewall blocking some features, select the Allow access button.
Restore NuGet packages
NuGet is a package manager that will bring in the dependencies of your new app.
The package restore process will start automatically. Wait until the Restored or Ready message appears in the status bar at the bottom left of the screen.
Run your app
This tutorial will focus on deploying a .NET MAUI application to your local Windows machine first. Later, you'll have the option to set up an Android device or emulator.
Set up Windows for development
To develop Windows applications, you'll need to enable developer mode to sideload applications on Windows 11 or Windows 10.
Enable developer mode
On Windows, go to the Settings application.
Search for Developer settings, which is located under For developers in Privacy & security on Windows 11 and Update & Security on Windows 10.
Turn on the toggle under Developer Mode.
The Use developer features dialog is displayed. Select Yes to confirm that you want to enable the developer mode.
Run on Windows
You are now ready to run and deploy your .NET MAUI app to Windows.
In the toolbar, you should see Windows Machine as the debug target by default.
To run your app, select Debug > Start Debugging from the main menu (or press F5).
Congratulations, you've built and run your first .NET MAUI app!
Edit your code
When developing applications with .NET MAUI, XAML Hot Reload is available when you're debugging your application. This means that you can change the XAML user interface (UI) while the application is running and the UI will update automatically.
Go back to Visual Studio and leave the app running. In the Solution Explorer, double-click the MainPage.xaml file under the MyFirstMauiApp project.
Currently, the Text of the first Label is set to say Hello, World! as shown in the following code:
The app UI updates automatically as you make changes.
When developing applications with .NET MAUI, you can also use .NET Hot Reload to reload your C# code. Let's modify the logic in the application to increment the count by 10 instead of by 1.
Open MainPage.xaml.cs (this file is nested under MainPage.xaml, or you can right-click and select View Code from the menu).
The OnCounterClicked method on that file currently has the following code:
To apply your code changes, select the Hot Reload button in Visual Studio or select ALT+F10.
Select the `Click me` button and see it increment by 10. Well done! You can close the running app now.
Configure Android device
You can decide to deploy to one or more of the platforms based on your development environment. You just ran and deployed your app to Windows. Now, let's set up an Android device or emulator.
Android SDK Install
From the debug drop down menu, select net6.0-android under Framework.
Specific versions of the Android SDK are required to build projects. If you haven't accepted the Android SDK license, you'll see the following error message on the Error List window.
Double click the message to start the license acceptance process. Click Accept for each of the licenses present and the automatic installation will begin.
Set up Android emulator
If you don't have an Android device to deploy to, you can set up an Android emulator. If you've already done this, you can skip this step.
If this if your first time building a .NET MAUI application, you'll see "Android Emulator" in the debug menu. Click it to start the creation process.
This brings up a User Account Control prompt. Select the Yes button and the emulator creation process will start. Select the Create button to create an emulator with default settings.
At this point, you may be prompted to agree to the license agreement for the Android emulator. Read through and select Accept to continue the process. This will download the emulator images and finalize the creation of the emulator for use in Visual Studio.
Once the emulator has been created, you'll see a button that says Start. Click it.
You may receive prompt to enable Windows Hypervisor Platform. Follow the documentation to enable acceleration to improve performance (strongly recommended).
The Android emulator will launch. Wait for it to fully finish starting and you'll see it displayed in the Visual Studio debug menu. This may take some time.
Your Android emulator has now been created and is ready to use. Next time you run Visual Studio, the emulator will appear directly in the debug target window and will start when you select it. If you ran into any issues or have performance issues with the emulator, read through the full setup documentation.
Set up Android device
To develop with your Android device, USB debugging needs to be enabled. Follow these steps on the device to connect it to Visual Studio. If you don't have an Android device, you can skip this section.
Enable developer mode
Go to the Settings screen.
Find Build number by using search at the top of the settings screen, or locate it in About phone.
Tap Build number 7-10 times until "You are now a developer!" pops up.
Click Create.
Check USB debugging status
Go to the Settings screen.
Find USB debugging by using search at the top of the settings screen, or locate it in Developer options.
Enable USB debugging if it isn't enabled already.
Trust device
Plug your device into your computer.
You'll be prompted to Allow USB debugging.
Check Always allow from this computer.
Click Allow.
Your device is now configured and will show up in Visual Studio as a deployment target.
