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Build a Mac Catalyst app with .NET CLI

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In this tutorial, you'll learn how to create and run a .NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI) app on Mac Catalyst using .NET Command Line Interface (CLI) on macOS:

  1. To create .NET MAUI apps, you'll need to download and run the installer for the latest .NET runtime. You'll also need to download and install the version of Xcode that's required by the version of .NET MAUI that you're using. For information, see Release versions.

  2. On your Mac, open Terminal and check that you have the latest .NET runtime installed:

    dotnet --version

  3. In Terminal, install the latest public build of .NET MAUI:

    sudo dotnet workload install maui --source https://api.nuget.org/v3/index.json

    This command will install the latest released version of .NET MAUI, including the required platform SDKs.

  4. In Terminal, create a new .NET MAUI app using .NET CLI:

    dotnet new maui -n "MyMauiApp"

  1. In Terminal, change directory to MyMauiApp, and build and run the app:

    cd MyMauiApp
dotnet build -t:Run -f net8.0-maccatalyst

    The dotnet build command will restore the project dependencies, build the app, and launch it.

    If you see a build error and a warning that the Xcode app bundle could not be found, you may need to run the following command:

    xcode-select --reset

  2. In the running app, press the Click me button several times and observe that the count of the number of button clicks is incremented.

    .NET MAUI app running on Mac.

Build with a specific version of Xcode

If you have multiple versions of Xcode installed on your Mac, it's possible to specify which Xcode version should be used when building your app. There are a number of approaches that can be used to accomplish this, but the recommended approach is to set the MD_APPLE_SDK_ROOT environment variable to the path of the Xcode version.

Warning

Using xcode-select -s to set the version of Xcode to use isn't recommended.

To set the MD_APPLE_SDK_ROOT environment variable for the duration of the current terminal session:

  1. Open the Terminal application.

  2. Type the following command, substituting in your version of Xcode, and press Enter:

    export MD_APPLE_SDK_ROOT=/Applications/Xcode_14.1.0.app

If you want to set this environment variable permanently, you can add the export command to your shell profile, such as .zprofile.