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What's new in .NET MAUI for .NET 8

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The focus of .NET MAUI in .NET 8 is quality. In .NET 8, 1618 pull requests were merged that closed 689 issues. These includes changes from the .NET MAUI team as well as the .NET MAUI community. These changes should result in a significant increase in quality in .NET 8.

Important

Due to working with underlying external dependencies, such as Xcode or Android SDK Tools, the .NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI) support policy differs from the .NET and .NET Core support policy. For more information, see .NET MAUI support policy.

In .NET 8, .NET MAUI ships as a .NET workload and multiple NuGet packages. The advantage of this approach is that it enables you to easily pin your projects to specific versions, while also enabling you to easily preview unreleased or experimental builds. When you create a new .NET MAUI project the required NuGet packages are automatically added to the project.

This article lists the new features of .NET MAUI for .NET 8 and provides links to more detailed information on each.

For information about what's new in .NET 8, see What's new in .NET 8.

New functionality

While the focus of this release of .NET MAUI is quality, there's also some new functionality that enables new scenarios in your apps.

Controls

Desktop

Gesture recognizers

Platform integration

XAML

Troubleshooting

Miscellaneous

Type deprecation and removal

The following types or members have been deprecated:

The following types or members have been removed:

Behavior changes

The following behavior has changed from the previous release:

  • Use of the Map control from XAML now requires the following xmlns namespace declaration: xmlns:maps="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dotnet/2021/maui/maps".
  • Image caching is disabled on Android when loading an image from a stream with the ImageSource.FromStream method. This is due to the lack of data from which to create a reasonable cache key.
  • On iOS, pages automatically scroll when the soft input keyboard would cover a text entry field, so that the field is above the soft input keyboard. The KeyboardAutoManagerScroll.Disconnect method, in the Microsoft.Maui.Platform namespace, can be called to disable this default behavior. The KeyboardAutoManagerScroll.Connect method can be called to re-enable the behavior after it's been disabled.
  • How the color of a tab is set in a Shell app has changed on some platforms. For more information, see Tab appearance.
  • It's not required to specify a value for the $(ApplicationIdGuid) build property in your app's project file. This is because .NET MAUI Windows apps no longer require a GUID as an app ID, and instead use the value of the $(ApplicationId) build property as the app ID. Therefore, the same reverse domain format app ID is now used across all platforms, such as com.mycompany.myapp.
  • .NET MAUI Mac Catalyst apps are no longer limited to 50 menu items on the menu bar.
  • The PlatformImage.FromStream method, in the Microsoft.Maui.Graphics namespace, can now be used to load images on Windows instead of having to use the W2DImageLoadingService class.
  • On Android, animations respect the system animation settings. For more information, see Basic animation.

Performance

There are plenty of performance changes in .NET MAUI 8. These changes can be classified into five areas:

For more information, see .NET 8 Performance Improvements in .NET MAUI.

Upgrade from .NET 7 to .NET 8

To upgrade your projects from .NET 7 to .NET 8, install .NET 8 and the .NET MAUI workload with Visual Studio 17.8+, or with the standalone installer and the dotnet workload install maui command.

Then, open your .csproj file and change the Target Framework Monikers (TFMs) from 7 to 8. If you're using a TFM such as net7.0-ios13.6 be sure to match the platform version or remove it entirely. The following example shows the TFMs for a .NET 7 project:

<TargetFrameworks>net7.0-android;net7.0-ios;net7.0-maccatalyst;net7.0-tizen</TargetFrameworks>
<TargetFrameworks Condition="$([MSBuild]::IsOSPlatform('windows'))">$(TargetFrameworks);net7.0-windows10.0.19041.0</TargetFrameworks>

The following example shows the TFMs for a .NET 8 project:

<TargetFrameworks>net8.0-android;net8.0-ios;net8.0-maccatalyst;net8.0-tizen</TargetFrameworks>
<TargetFrameworks Condition="$([MSBuild]::IsOSPlatform('windows'))">$(TargetFrameworks);net8.0-windows10.0.19041.0</TargetFrameworks>

Explicit package references should also be added to your .csproj file for the following .NET MAUI NuGet packages:

<ItemGroup>
    <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.Maui.Controls" Version="$(MauiVersion)" />
    <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.Maui.Controls.Compatibility" Version="$(MauiVersion)" />
</ItemGroup>

The $(MauiVersion) variable is referenced from the version of .NET MAUI you've installed. You can override this by adding the $(MauiVersion) build property to your .csproj file:

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
    <PropertyGroup>
        <TargetFrameworks>net8.0-android;net8.0-ios;net8.0-maccatalyst</TargetFrameworks>
        <UseMaui>True</UseMaui>
        <MauiVersion>8.0.3</MauiVersion>
    </PropertyGroup>
</Project>

This can be useful when using ad-hoc builds from the nightly feed or builds downloaded from pull requests.

In addition, the $(ApplicationIdGuid) build property can be removed from your .csproj file in .NET 8. For more information, see Behavior changes.

Prior to building your upgraded app for the first time, delete the bin and obj folders.

Note

The project template for a .NET MAUI app in .NET 8 enables the nullable context for the project with the $(Nullable) build property. For more information, see Nullable.

See also