How to Create Raspberry Pi GUIs Using Visual Studio

This is a tutorial on how to create GUI apps for Raspberry Pi using Visual Studio. We'll use Windows Forms and Mono to make this work.

--- More Info ---
I can not be held responsible for loss of data/data corruption or your PC breaking.

This also works for other x86 Linux systems too!

For this tutorial, you can use any .NET language such as C#, VB.NET and F#.
When creating buttons, set the BackColour to ControlLight (under the 'System' tab) to make sure the button has a different colour to the background when run on the Raspberry Pi.

If you are having issues on the RPi with VB, enter sudo apt install mono-vbnc into the terminal - suggested by Charith Ratnayake in the comments section.

Raspberry Pi is a trademark of the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

--- Links ---
Raspbian 9 = Stretch
Raspbian 8 = Jessie

Winforms Demo Project Folder (direct download):

-- Instructions For Editing --
• Unzip this folder, then right click and select 'Open in Visual Studio'.
• The Designer should come up.

Broken links? Tell me in the comments section, and I'll try my best to fix it :)

--- My Channel ---
If you found the video helpful, please give it a like and if you want to show your support, subscribe to my channel!

--- Music ---
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

[dishantshah]

You sir, are a saviour. I am grateful to you for your services to humankind. Subscribed and bookmarked.

[albertxcastro]

I thought it was harder to create a GUI for the raspberry!
It is as easy as create a win app :o
Awesome!

[Inksaver]

Subscibed! I have been fighting with C and gcc trying to get GTk working, finally managed to get Eclipse and Window Builder for a Java GUI for a couple of minutes before crashing, and all I had to do was run a WinForms .exe file in Mono to allow me to use my favourite language C#. You even showed how to write the desktop equivalent of a .bat file to start it. Thank you

[mroxalex]

Thanks! It works. Subscribed and liked.

[cyber]

Thanks for your help, This is what i have been searching for it. I have liked the video, I have Subscribed and i have turn the notifications on :) thank you.

[kalaivanans]

thanks. it is amazing for me.. thanks for your video... especially your more info... kindly keep your support continuously...

[OctaRudin]

Thankyou sir. Very helpful. I will try on VS2010 version with basic language. But, if you use mono as a compiler in raspberry pi then the language should be in C#, right ?

[SaulHernandez-vhrw]

Hello Penguin, thanks for the tutorial really helpfull. I successflly opened a plain windows forms, but I have another winforms which uses MySQL to retrieve some data from a web server. But it won't let me run that one. Do you have any idea of how to make it work?

[eastern]

Hi master:
Do you have the tutorial about using GPIO port turn on a LED and using Visual Studio either?

[edsonferraz]

Uaaaau !! excellent, congratulation. Is possible run any application Visual Studio in C#?
I have a application that run a player of video/audio in C# using library AForge, it's can run?

[weirdguysausage]

If we have advanced Raspian Ver. should we revert back to later versions? The only available mono today is for Raspbian 10, we are at Raspian 12

[getiatrickpatrick]

im used to creating GUIs with XAML with visual studio, before i install Visual Studio on my Raspberry Pi do you know if XAML markup language is supported, Thanks!

[martinlukavec]

great tutorial because i need to put windows program on raspberry pi 3b+ and maybe you know how far windows is on this device so i need to use raspberry pi os, but it sometimes fail at things that windows not and sometimes it doesnt run the program when windows do it without problem, but for program that is for free its realy good (pls if you know how to start every app from bin from visual studio comment)

[andrewjames]

This video is old, but so far it has been the only source of information to come close to what I'm looking for. I'm pretty new to programming and using a Raspberry Pi. I was curious if I could link the buttons to the file system of the Pi? I'm building a mass storage server, and I'd like to have my own user interface to go with it. Is what I'm wondering possible with this method, or should I be looking somewhere else?
Any help is appreciated, and thank you in advance!

[arongibson]

Great video! I was wondering if its possible to do this during start up of raspberry pi? and if so, would it then be possible to use C code on the GPIOs?.
Such as having a touch interface where the interface would be able to turn on an LED from GPIO in C code?

[RonenLin]

Can you auto open the app on boot and initialize on which screen to open it in?

[MiguelArturoMonclus]

what if I want to use the GPIO pins in the application?

[adityabayupratama]

Hi, If you using framework like Guna, and mysql. It is still can running on raspberry pi?

[kaosthecosmicreviewer]

I want to make a raspberry pi sound box with a touch screen, I touch a button on the screen and it plays a particular sound effect, would visual studio be able to help me out with this?

[ReymerzZ]

just wanted to ask about your windows border settings that transparent blue is AWESOME