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Installing Xamarin Preview on Windows

Visual Studio 2019 and Visual Studio 2017 do not support alpha, beta, and stable channels in the same way as earlier versions. Instead, there are just two options:

  • Release – equivalent to the Stable channel in Visual Studio for Mac
  • Preview – equivalent to the Alpha and Beta channels in Visual Studio for Mac

Tip

To try out pre-release features, you should download the Visual Studio Preview installer, which will offer the option to install Preview versions of Visual Studio side-by-Side with the stable (Release) version. More information on What's new in Visual Studio 2019 can be found in the release notes.

The Preview version of Visual Studio may include corresponding Preview versions of Xamarin functionality, including:

  • Xamarin.Forms
  • Xamarin.iOS
  • Xamarin.Android
  • Xamarin Profiler
  • Xamarin Inspector
  • Xamarin Remote iOS Simulator

The Preview Installer screenshot below shows both Preview and Release options (notice the grey version numbers: version 15.0 is release and version 15.1 is a Preview):

installer showing preview options

During the installation process, an Installation Nickname can be applied to the side-by-side installation (so they can be distinguished in the Start menu), as shown below:

edit nickname before installing

Uninstalling Visual Studio 2019 Preview

The Visual Studio Installer should also be used to un-install preview versions of Visual Studio 2019. Read the uninstalling Xamarin guide for more information.