Build iOS Apps with or WITHOUT a Mac? Visual Studio, C#, & .NET MAUI with Hot Restart

NO MAC REQUIRED! In this video, I'm going to show you multiple ways to build, debug, and deploy your iOS apps from Windows with C#, Visual Studio, and .NET MAUI. Leverage the built-in mac build host connection and use a remoted iOS simulator directly on your Window desktop. Better yet, use iOS Hot Restart for local deployment to an iOS device without the need for a Mac. After watching this video, you'll be ready to build and deploy your apps with ease!

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Chapters:
00:00 - Intro & Mac Build Host Overview
01:55 - Pair Visual Studio to Mac
04:10 - Build & Deploy to Remoted iOS Simulator
09:00 - Skillshare partnership
10:21 - Enabling iOS Hot Restart
11:50 - Deploying to local iOS device
14:10 - Full Hot Restart Guide & Docs & Tips

Disclaimer: This channel, videos, and streams are created in my spare time and are a product of me... James Montemagno! They are NOT officially affiliated or endorsed by Microsoft (my employer) in any way. Opinions and views are my own.

Special thanks to Skillshare for sponsoring this video.

My Setup:

#dotnetmaui #dotnet #visualstudio #iosdeveloper

[mks-h]

"No Mac Required", yet the first step is to connect to a Mac...

[jramirezdev]

I have a Macbook air 2020 with intel CPU and 8Gb of RAM and despite I mostly do all the coding in a Windows machine, the testing/running process on the remote mac is extremely slow but Its because the macbook is not that fast, so it would worth it to have a MacBook Pro and do the coding directly there but then you notice the VS for Mac is a complete pain compared with the one for Windows (lacks of so many features)… so at these times you as a freelancer need to be rich to have a windows machine and also a MacBook Pro if you want to have a good developing experience with Xamarin/MAUI

[ilanmazuz]

Thanks James.
Can u do a video using Mac in the Cloud? i don't have any iOS devices and i need a way to build the iOS version and the cloud seems to be the right way for me, but i'de love to see a tutorial on this.

Thanks a lot!

[chillbro]

hahahah pouring tea right in front of the camera -- "OH! Hello!?!" hahaha hilarious

[cptechno]

Missing topics that are essential...

Hi! I viewed several of your videos regarding Visual Studio MAUI. However, I think there are some missing topics that are essential for developers.

Regarding the deployment of Visual Studio MAUI app to Apple development system, these topics are missing:

1) How to deploy MAUI app to Apple TestFlight Beta Testing (entire process)
2) How to deploy MAUI app to Apple App Store (from IPA to store..entire process)

[harbor.boundary.flight]

“Easily build iOS apps on Windows devices, by simply connecting to an Apple device!”

[leonabc]

As an ex Mono/Xamarin Dev I’m about to give up on Maui and turn my back on MS. The Mac dev environment is so buggy you can’t even deploy release apps to Android devices without turning to the cmd. Can do consecutive builds without changing anything, one works the next breaks. I’m done.

[kwesiboateng]

Watching you over the years, you really got better at engaging your audience in other wise boring content to present.

[doublebass]

Back when I was developing xamarin apps at work (that project was killed just before MAUI went GA), I had 5 Mac minis. 2 were for debugging and 3 were TeamCity build agents. Every time my certificates had to be renewed, I cried.

[cheronecom]

Tried it and it worked (I did have to create a new certificate from Tools -> Options -> Xamarin -> Apple Accounts -> View Details. Also, I had to enable Developer Mode and restart my device. I did notice that hot reload (not hot restart?) didn't seem to work, but maybe that is not possible when running through this shell app, not sure.

[tihoblajev]

James where is Live Preview for MAUI, i can’t believe that creating a designer for MAUI has not been a priority for Microsoft

[robertrobert]

99$ for testing app on your own phone.

[judgewest]

This is super cool and if you're building large-scale applications being deployed via the app stores then you would absolutely be running Windows / Mac alongside for the sheer simplicity of that setup to create native slick apps - I would do nothing else.
If you're creating applications to be used by a more focused audience (i.e. functional apps mainly) PWA man! No mac required, no licence keys from Apple required, one codebase for iOS / Android... the API now supports push notifications which was always the holdback.

[cissemy]

Hi James,
I am getting this error after pairing to Mac and start building :
MSB3030 Could not copy the file because it was not found. DDSMobile (net8.0-ios) C:\Program

Thanks

[RexRacer]

Enjoyed your video a lot. I was wondering if you have a video showing the process of putting a .net maui app created inside VS Windows on the app store for an adhoc deployment to my test iPhone.

[cptechno]

Do we need all the Apple IDs, Certificates, Profiles to do the first way?

[ΣοφιαΔουμανη]

For the people that does not have Mac device, in my case i downloaded Mac in VM. In the "Pair to mac" window it did not showing the Mac Vm, so in this case i changed the VMs Network settings to be Bridged Adapter. After that reopened the Vm and the Mac showed in the Pair to mac window!

[lynnbennett]

Great Video! I bought a Mac for iOS dev just as the news broke that VS on Mac would no longer be supported. Then I was very excited to see all the support for MAUI on VS Code for Mac. I have had good success with using simulators, but I can't figure out how to run my apps on my actual device connected to my Mac. Is Microsoft pushing Mac developers to Windows with these tactics?

[johnmaguire]

It would be nice to see the full apple android deployment. Just started coding and have followed this process. Have monkeys on my iPad using the api. Creating a team to select didn’t work straight out the box first time, but I got there.

[bobbastian]

I can't find Issuer ID anywhere on App Store Connect, they've removed it from where it was and not updated any documentation so I can't get Hot Restart to work at all. Can you do a step by step to set that up please? Just just skirt over it here.