Xamarin.Essentials

Xamarin.Essentials gives developers essential cross-platform APIs for their mobile applications.

iOS, Android, and UWP offer unique operating system and platform APIs that developers have access to, all in C# leveraging Xamarin. It is great that developers have 100% API access in C# with Xamarin, but these APIs are different per platform. This means developers have to learn three different APIs to access platform-specific features. With Xamarin.Essentials, developers have a single cross-platform API that works with any iOS, Android, or UWP application that can be accessed from shared code no matter how the user interface is created.

Build Status

Build Server	Type	Platform	Status
VSTS	Build	Windows
Jenkins	Device Tests	macOS
App Center	Sample App	Android
App Center	Sample App	iOS

Sample App

Try out Xamarin.Essentials on your device!

• Android Sample App via App Center.

Installation

Xamarin.Essentials is available via:

• NuGet Official Releases:

Please read our Getting Started with Xamarin.Essentials guide for full setup instructions.

Documentation

Browse our full documentation for Xamarin.Essentials, including feature guides, on how to use each feature.

Supported Platforms

Xamarin.Essentials is focused on the following platforms:

• iOS (10+)
• Android (4.4+)
• UWP (Fall Creators Update+)

API Documentation

The following cross-platform APIs are available in Xamarin.Essentials:

• Accelerometer
• App Information
• Battery
• Clipboard
• Compass
• Connectivity
• Device Display Information
• Device Information
• Email
• File System Helpers
• Flashlight
• Geocoding
• Geolocation
• Gyroscope
• Launcher
• Magnetometer
• MainThread
• Maps
• Open Browser
• Orientation Sensor
• Phone Dialer
• Preferences
• Screen Lock
• Secure Storage
• Share
• SMS
• Text-to-Speech
• Version Tracking
• Vibrate

Contributing

Please read through our Contribution Guide. We are not accepting new PRs for full features, however any issue that is marked as up for grabs are open for community contributions. We encourage creating new issues for bugs found during usage that the team will triage. Additionally, we are open for code refactoring suggestions in PRs.

Building Xamarin.Essentials

Xamarin.Essentials is built with the new SDK-style projects with multi-targeting enabled. This means that all code for iOS, Android, and UWP exist inside of the Xamarin.Essentials project.

If building on Visual Studio 2017, you will need the following SDKs and workloads installed:

Workloads need:

• Xamarin
• .NET Core
• UWP

You will need the following SDKs

• Android 9.0, 8.1, 8.0, 7.1, 7.0, & 6.0 SDK Installed
• UWP 10.0.16299 SDK Installed

If using Visual Studio for Mac the project can be built at the command line with MSBuild. To change the project type that you are working with, simply edit Xamarin.Essentials.csproj and modify the TargetFrameworks for only the project type you want to use.

To build through the command line, navigate to where Xamarin.Essentials.csproj exists then run:

msbuild /restore Xamarin.Essentials.csproj

FAQ

Here are some frequently asked questions about Xamarin.Essentials, but be sure to read our full FAQ on our Wiki.

License

Please see the License.