Android Devices Detected for Xamarin.Android but not .NET for Android

Question

Android Devices Detected for Xamarin.Android but not .NET for Android

Nathan Sokalski 4,111

I have several Solutions, Xamarin.Android & .NET for Android. When I open the Xamarin.Android Solution Visual Studio 2022 Community 17.13.4 detects all of my physical Android devices, but they are not detected by Visual Studio when opening the .NET for Android Solution. This is on the same machine without unplugging, restarting, or changing any settings. Even when running multiple instances of Visual Studio they are only detected by the instance in which I open the Xamarin.Android Solution (regardless of which one I open first). This applies to both physical Android devices that are connected to my machine. Is there some kind of Solution or Project property in the .NET for Android that is causing this?

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Answer 1

Tianyu Sun-MSFT 34,436 Microsoft External Staff

Hello @Nathan Sokalski ,

Please try to open Android Adb Command Prompt(Tools > Android > Android Adb Command Prompt....) and run adb devices command, see if the devices list there.

User's image

If no devices are listed there, try to run adb kill-server and adb start-server command. See if it works.

I tested on my side with 17.13.4 but failed to reproduce this issue, so if the issue persists, could you please share us the complete steps you performed and let us know the components/tools about Android, SDK, Xamarin, MAUI that you have installed on your machine?

Besides, is it possible to test on another machine or try the third, fourth different Android devices? I doubt that the devices have been connected, it’s just VS didn’t refresh it. Will rebooting a couple of times works?

Best regards,

Tianyu

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Tianyu Sun-MSFT 34,436 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2025-03-28T14:00:20.1+00:00

Hi @Nathan Sokalski ,

May I know if you have tried the methods that I shared above, does any of them work?

What if you try to run Visual Studio as administrator, and re-enable the USB debugging on the Android device?
Nathan Sokalski 4,111 Reputation points

2025-03-30T16:49:03.02+00:00
I tried the suggestions above, with no success. Here is another scenario I tried:

2 instances of VS 2022 open, one with Xamarin.Android & one with .NET for Android, both have managed to detect my devices (Surface Duo 2 & Samsung Galaxy S10e)

Close instance with .NET for Android (but not with Xamarin.Android)

Reopen instance with .NET for Android

Instance with Xamarin.Android never stopped detecting my devices, but new instance of .NET for Android does not

This scenario (in the occasional scenario where I can get the .NET for Android instance to detect the devices at all) is consistent. The reverse, however, is not, the Xamarin.Android instance always detects the devices. All of the above is done with the same devices on the same machine with the same installation of VS 2022. I will also mention that VS 2022 detects both or neither of the devices, which indicates that the problem is not the devices. Based on everything above, it seems like Xamarin.Android always detects the devices, but .NET for Android is inconsistent. Both devices are listed when using the adb devices -l command.
Tianyu Sun-MSFT 34,436 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2025-03-31T06:44:34.4333333+00:00

Hi @Nathan Sokalski ,

Thank you for sharing more details.

The behavior is inconsistent which indicates that the device can be detected but sometimes cannot. As it only appears on the .NET for Android project, it’s possible that there is something wrong with the .NET for Android project in Visual Studio 2022.

I suggest you submit a feedback ticket on Developer Community and directly report this issue to VS Product Team. Once there’s any update or fix, you will be informed there.

Besides, currently, the latest version of Visual Studio 2022 is 17.13.5, I think you can try to update to the latest version and test again, before you try to report this issue.

If you do report the issue, please kindly share the ticket link here for better tracking.

Let me know if you have any further concerns.

Regards,

Tianyu

Answer 2

Andy Pennell [MSFT] 11

I had this exact problem on my Desktop, but my laptop was fine. I compared the two, and once I uninstalled Android SDK Platform 35, it worked again. (This left the newest one as SDK Platform 34).

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Android Devices Detected for Xamarin.Android but not .NET for Android

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