Xamarin.Forms supported platforms
Xamarin.Forms applications can be written for the following operating systems:
- iOS 9 or higher.
- Android 4.4 (API 19) or higher (more details). However, Android 5.0 (API 21) is recommended as the minimum API. This ensures full compatibility with all the Android support libraries, while still targeting the majority of Android devices.
- Windows 10 Universal Windows Platform, build 10.0.16299.0 or greater for .NET Standard 2.0 support. However, build 10.0.18362.0 or greater is recommended.
Xamarin.Forms apps for iOS, Android, and the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) can be built in Visual Studio. However, a networked Mac is required for iOS development using the latest version of Xcode and the minimum version of macOS specified by Apple. For more information, see Windows requirements.
Xamarin.Forms apps for iOS and Android can be built in Visual Studio for Mac. For more information, see macOS requirements.
Note
Developing apps using Xamarin.Forms requires familiarity with .NET Standard.
Additional platform support
Xamarin.Forms supports additional platforms beyond iOS, Android, and Windows:
- Samsung Tizen
- macOS 10.13 or higher
- GTK#
- WPF
The status of these platforms is available on the Xamarin.Forms GitHub platform support wiki.
Android platform support
You should have the latest Android SDK Tools and Android API platform installed. You can update to the latest versions using the Android SDK Manager.
Additionally, the target/compile version for Android projects must be set to Use latest installed platform. However the minimum version can be set to API 19 so you can continue to support devices that use Android 4.4 and newer. These values are set in the Project Options:
Project Options > Application > Application Properties
Deprecated platforms
These platforms are not supported when using Xamarin.Forms 3.0 or newer:
- Windows 8.1 / Windows Phone 8.1 WinRT
- Windows Phone 8 Silverlight