Now, .NET MAUI is Coming to Visual Studio Code Too

One month after announcing new C# capabilities in Visual Studio Code, Microsoft revealed that it is bringing .NET MAUI to its beloved code editor too. This is an interesting development, and I suspect it will only heighten the growing competition between the (full) Visual Studio and Studio Code teams.

“Today, we’re excited to announce the first preview of the .NET MAUI extension, which, paired with C# Dev Kit, gives you the tools you need to develop your cross-platform .NET mobile and desktop apps with VS Code on Windows, macOS, and Linux,” Microsoft’s Maddy Montaquila writes in the announcement post. “The .NET MAUI extension lets you develop and debug your app on devices, emulators, and simulators from VS Code. .NET MAUI and C# Dev Kit borrow some familiar features from Visual Studio to enhance your productivity, making your mobile and desktop development delightful with C# in VS Code.”

Just so we’re clear on what’s happening here, .NET MAUI is the successor to Xamarin Forms, the multiplatform mobile apps development environment that Microsoft took control of as part of its Xamarin acquisition in 2016. .NET MAUI improves on Xamarin Forms in many ways, but the key upgrade, to me, is the addition of Windows, Mac, and Linux app creation capabilities in addition to iPhone/iPad and Android.

To date, developers interested in .NET MAUI have needed to use the full Visual Studio product, where it appears as a workload alongside desktop workloads like .NET desktop development (Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Forms), desktop development with C++ (Win32), and Universal Windows Platform development (deprecated). The implication was that developers needed the power and capability of that environment to create what are essentially hybrid mobile/desktop apps.

(Full) Visual Studio is popular in the C#-based Microsoft Stack developer world, for sure. But Visual Studio Code, a lightweight, extensible, and open-source code editor has seen explosive growth that dwarfs the popularity of its more venerable cousin. And one imagines that there might be some friction between the maintainers of the old (full Visual Studio) and those working on Visual Studio Code. And this certainly won’t help matters.

But for those who write software, the addition of .NET MAUI capabilities to the widely-loved Visual Studio Code will only expand its exposure to a new generation of developers. Put simply—and assuming it works well—this is a big step forward for a .NET group that has embraced open-source and cross-platform development. And it was made possible by that earlier C# extension for Visual Studio.

Today’s .NET MAUI was just one of several tied to the release of .NET 8 Preview 6 ahead of what I assume is a November launch. But to me, this is big news. And I’m curious to try this out and see how it works.