No MSIX 🚫 Distribute Your .NET MAUI Windows App Unpackaged

Sometimes you just want to grab the exe and DLLs and send that over as a way of distributing your .NET MAUI Windows app. Until now, you had to use an MSIX installer to do that, but not anymore! In this video I'll show you how to distribute Your .NET MAUI Windows App Unpackaged.

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Disclaimer: this channel is done on personal title, in my free time, and not officially affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft (my employer) in any way. Opinions and views are my own.

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⏱ Timestamps
00:00 - .NET MAUI Windows Apps Without MSIX
00:13 - What Is MSIX? Unpackaged?
01:10 - Enable Unpackaged Distribution
04:28 - Warning!

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#dotnetmaui #msix #unpackaged #winui #dotnet6 #maui

[ertan]

You are a life saver thank you a lot. The app was asked from me in a short time and this signing thing is a bit complicated and somehow did not go well and I saw your video and done! It works with .net 8.0 too. Thank you again

[Canodis]

I've been trying for 1 week to figure this out, you are amazing, thank you so much <3

[matthewleibowitz]

Good news! I think the windows app sdk is now included by default in the bin folder, so less to worry about! It can be disabled by setting the WindowsAppSDKSelfContained property to false in the csproj. You will then have to worry about installing it.

[josedonizeteoliveirajunior]

Very good video. Very good to know the options available.

[TimmD]

I hope that it will soon be possible to create a single executable. I really liked that in WPF.

[ikhifeli]

Hi, Gerald! Great video, really informative. I am in a situation where I need to publish an windows app in this way, however, the size of the app, which is windows only (I removed the other files from the platform directory) still has a ton of extra files, such as those language packs or resized images of some sort. Any idea how we can trim them out?
Thanks!

[philippedoumet]

Hey Gerald, do you remember me? haha
Thank you for this very usefull tutorial :)

[mkgungor]

Hi
Could you make a video about how to make the .Net MAUI app auto start at boot for Android … Thank you!

[Jennalcn]

Thank you for sharing. I am new in MAUI, and I am working on a MAUI Blazor project. With this method, I can build exe file. But when I double click the exe. Nothing happen, no window, no error, no message. I try to execute exe in cmd, still nothing happen, no window, no error, no message. How can I debug this issue?

[carlossantamaria]

I want to send that .exe file to another person, but that person cannot open it.

[en_acorn]

Hi Gerald, the video is informative and helpful, thanks!. I have a question, is this possible on Mac Catalyst?

[anwaralomari]

which one do you prefer
Flutter or MAUI
and why؟😊

[douglaswt]

Nice. It Workd. But can someone tell me why my VS2022 isn't creating the APK file for Android? It' just creates the .AAB file for layStore deploying

[griffithe]

Hello Gerald. First of all, Thank You!
..tried out to compile this way and it worked. The another thing about MAUI is the size. So I've simply compiled the standard example with a size of around 310mb for a white screen app with an logo. Is there maybe a way to strip it somehow? Or why is this that large. If this is true, maybe I should keep up with WPF. I'm new to MAUI.

[carlosmedina]

And if the application is made in Maui Blazor or better known as Maui Hybrid

[Kevmoens]

We build our apps in house and ship an installer that then publishes a click once app in IIS at The customer’s on premise server. Moving to Maui and .Net 6 will we be able to do the same thing?

[goblelol]

Is it possible to make something like Debug-Msix, Debug-Unpackaged? i.e. separate ways of building

[flobuilds]

How can you create like real world installers for this?

[humbertomoli]

to publish it in the store you have to pass it as win 32 in this case?

[redrevyol]

I used Inno Setup to create the exe installer., but I can't install it in Program Files because I get a purple screen.