The future of Xamarin Forms

Microsoft have just announced the future of Xamarin and Xamarin forms - the .NET Multi-platform App UI (or MAUI for short). As a name, it’s not great. The highlights are as follows:

  • It’s an evolution of Xamarin Forms. It basically is Xamarin Forms, but finally accepting some breaking changes. To be honest, I’m hoping for a lot since there is a lot of weirdness in Xamarin Forms that has been holding it back.
  • Single project, multi-targeted. It took a long time to get to the point where this was possible. From shared projects, to PCL projects, through .NET Standard. This should make things a lot easier.
  • Still based on platform renderers using native controls. This is a mixed bag. Using native controls has long been a selling point of Xamarin (with or without Forms). With the rise of Flutter this has been shown to be less important. Many people have been asking for consistent platform agnostic renderers instead.
  • The end of “Xamarin” as a name. Some time in the .NET 6 timeline (end of 2021) Xamarin.iOS will become .NET for iOS and Xamarin.Android will be .NET for Android. I have mixed feeling about this since this was a fairly succinct way to describe by top skillset.

I also already have my own enhancement issue submitted.