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Request for Support: iOS Native Development Continuity with .NET 9 (MAUI)

Hirak Desai 0 Reputation points
2025-07-03T10:28:30.52+00:00

Dear Microsoft Team,

We are reaching out to seek your guidance and support regarding a critical blocker we are facing in our iOS development workflow with .NET MAUI.

Current Challenge

Our mobile application is being developed using .NET MAUI and currently targets .NET 8. As we prepare to migrate to .NET 9 in alignment with platform and framework evolution, we are facing the following challenges:

Visual Studio for Mac, our current IDE for iOS native development, does not support .NET 9, and Microsoft has officially discontinued all support for Visual Studio for Mac.

This makes Visual Studio for Mac unusable for continuing iOS development using .NET 9.

Limitations with VS Code

We explored Visual Studio Code as an alternative, but we encountered critical limitations in the context of iOS native UI development:

Storyboard or XIB files cannot be directly opened or edited from VS Code.

While there is a workaround using the .xcodeproj file in the generated obj/xcode folder to open UI in Xcode, the UIViewController.cs bindings are missing.

As a result, we are currently unable to:

Create new UI screens using UIViewControllers.

  Add or update IBOutlets/IBActions in existing screens.

This blocks our ability to develop and maintain iOS native UI components under .NET 9 using MAUI.

Request for Support

We would appreciate your guidance on the following:

  1. What is the recommended approach to continue iOS native development using .NET 9 and MAUI now that Visual Studio for Mac is discontinued?

Is there any supported or recommended way to enable .cs file bindings (UIViewControllers, IBOutlets, IBActions) when using VS Code with .NET 9 MAUI on macOS?

Is Microsoft planning to introduce any official development environment or support path for iOS MAUI development under .NET 9 on macOS?

What are the best practices for maintaining a productive iOS development workflow in .NET 9 with MAUI, in the absence of Visual Studio for Mac?

Is JetBrains Rider a supported or recommended alternative for this scenario, or are there tools/extensions available to enhance Rider for iOS MAUI development with .NET 9?

Dear Microsoft Team,

We are reaching out to seek your guidance and support regarding a critical blocker we are facing in our iOS development workflow with .NET MAUI.

Current Challenge

Our mobile application is being developed using .NET MAUI and currently targets .NET 8. As we prepare to migrate to .NET 9 in alignment with platform and framework evolution, we are facing the following challenges:

Visual Studio for Mac, our current IDE for iOS native development, does not support .NET 9, and Microsoft has officially discontinued all support for Visual Studio for Mac.

This makes Visual Studio for Mac unusable for continuing iOS development using .NET 9.

Limitations with VS Code

We explored Visual Studio Code as an alternative, but we encountered critical limitations in the context of iOS native UI development:

Storyboard or XIB files cannot be directly opened or edited from VS Code.

While there is a workaround using the .xcodeproj file in the generated obj/xcode folder to open UI in Xcode, the UIViewController.cs bindings are missing.

As a result, we are currently unable to:

Create new UI screens using UIViewControllers.

  Add or update IBOutlets/IBActions in existing screens.

This blocks our ability to develop and maintain iOS native UI components under .NET 9 using MAUI.

Request for Support

We would appreciate your guidance on the following:

  1. What is the recommended approach to continue iOS native development using .NET 9 now that Visual Studio for Mac is discontinued?
  2. Is there any supported or recommended way to enable .cs file bindings (UIViewControllers, IBOutlets, IBActions) when using VS Code with .NET 9 iOS Native on macOS?
  3. Is Microsoft planning to introduce any official development environment or support path for iOS development under .NET 9 ios.native on macOS?
  4. What are the best practices for maintaining a productive workflow in . NET 9 ios.native, in the absence of Visual Studio for Mac?
Developer technologies | .NET | Xamarin

1 answer

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  1. Bruce (SqlWork.com) 79,101 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2025-07-18T03:03:00.3466667+00:00

    Visual studio code, is not an IDE. It is not likely to get support for interface builder (the swift and objective-c extensions don't support it). You use the xsync command line utility. You should be able to add a step to the msbuild project:

    https://github.com/dotnet/xcsync/

    If you want a Microsoft supported IDE, then the option is Visual Studio running in a VM on your Mac. Microsoft won't recommend JetBrains, but it is the only native IDE for Maui on the Mac. Clearly they have a competing cross platform product for Kotlin, but rider C# support seems ongoing.

    There is an ongoing effort to support native libraries:

    [https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/communitytoolkit/maui/native-library-interop/get-started

    ](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/communitytoolkit/maui/native-library-interop/get-started

    )For those that want to use native, it's basically community support. see the Native binding repo:

    https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Maui.NativeLibraryInterop

    Microsoft expects Maui developers to use Maui forms. Here is a thread on .xib support:

    https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/t/NET-iOS-Class-Library-does-not-support/10524579?ru=https%3A%2F%2Fdevelopercommunity.visualstudio.com%2Fcontent%2Fproblem%2F291775%2Fpackageidwin10sdk-10017134packageactioninstallretu-23.html%3FchildToView%3D333393

    note: for myself, dropping support of Visual Studio Mac, caused me to abandon Maui. I may revisit when it can create robust cross platform libraries. I switched to swift and swift ui which is a much better UI framework.

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