What is the alternate IDE in place of Visual Studio MAC to support the .NET8 in the MAC system for the development of native .NET SDK style IOS projects ?

Question

Hi Team,

As we already know Visual Studio for MAC is going to retire in Aug 31, 2024.

We are working on Migration of Xamarin Native Projects(Xamarin.Android and Xamarin.IOS) to .Net-Android /.Net-IOS Style Projects. What will be the alternate IDE for development of .Net SDK project for MAC ? It seems C# Dev Kit for VS Code is an alternative for MAUI Projects. Please let us know the IDE for developing the Native .NET Android/IOS Projects .

Looking forward for ur response.

Answer 1

Hello @Sheetal Rodrigues ,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum.

You can use C# Dev Kit for VS Code to develop the Native .NET Android/IOS Projects. The alternate choices have been listed here: What options do I have instead of Visual Studio for Mac? => 1. Visual Studio Code with the new C# Dev Kit and related extensions. 2. Visual Studio IDE running on Windows in a VM on Mac. 3. Visual Studio IDE running on Windows in a VM in the Cloud.

Sincerely,

Tianyu

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Answer 2

Nothing is better than Xcode for iOS and Mac app development. Visual Studio is best for Windows. Objective-C is great language of choice for Apple products and .NET for Windows.

Please accept this answer.

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Answer 3

if you want an IDE look at jet brains rider. they also have a cross platform kotlin story.

or as suggested go native with Xcode, but I picked Swift/Swift-UI rather than objective-c. Swift-UI is probably worth the switch by itself.

Answer 4

C# Dev Kit for VS Code can develop native .NET Android and iOS projects, and it will be the alternative for VS for MAC in the future.

You can find more information about C# Dev Kit and .NET MAUI in the following links:

• C# Dev Kit extension FAQ
• C# Developement Kit for.NET Android and.NET IOS

Please note that the tool just GA this month so the functionalities are still under improvement. If you have any feedback for C# Dev Kit, welcome to raise issues on https://github.com/dotnet/vscode-dotnettools (this represents the C# Dev Kit product feedback area – MAUI, Unity).