Xamarin Live Player Eases iOS Development on Windows

The new Xamarin Live Player will allow developers to test and write their iOS applications faster, without necessarily requiring a Mac computer to debug. Microsoft’s Terry Myerson spoke about the new Xamarin Live Player (XLP). As we wrote then, XLP is “…a new technology designed to make it easier for developers to write apps for iOS and Android devices.”

The Xamarin Live Player gives Visual Studio developers the ability to connect their Windows PC to an Apple iPhone or iPad and test and debug their application natively. This capability helps to streamline the iOS application development process, allowing organizations to bring their applications to users faster and with fewer issues.

The main benefit of using XLP is that it makes it possible for a developer to start building a mobile app for iOS or Android without first having to download the corresponding SDKs for those platforms. Simply start writing up a mobile app, and deploy it to your iOS or Android device for real-time development and debugging.

The Live Player was announced at Microsoft’s annual Build conference last month. Before this release, if a developer wanted to debug an iOS application built on Visual Studio, their Windows would still need to be on the same wireless network as a Mac with the Xcode IDE. Additionally, developers would need to install and use app emulator software.

At present, the focus of Xamarin Live Player is on Xamarin.Forms applications which support C#, F#, and XAML. There is some limited support for iOS storyboards, but editing these does require the use of a Mac.

To try XLP on your own, you’ll need a copy of Visual Studio 2017 Preview (15.3+ release) or Visual Studio for Mac on your development machine. Then visit the app store appropriate to your iOS / Android device and install the Xamarin Live Player. Once your development machine has paired with your device, you can get started. Note that a remote server is used for the initial pairing, but your app code is not sent to this 3rd party server.

Xamarin has prepared a list of current limitations which they will keep updated as corrections are made as well as a guide for getting XLP support enabled on your development machine.