.NET MAUI 6.0 - Emulators And Simulators

This article describes the virtual devices available for developing and debugging .NET MAUI apps with VS 2022. I developed KH Authenticator, a .NET MAUI App for Windows and Android which registers and authenticates a user without a password or email address. See KH Authenticator Server.

My current knowledge of iOS simulators is from research only. A Mac and Xcode are required. I'm not sure if Mac Catalyst is still required, research found "There's no need to run a separate application on the Mac – Visual Studio 2022 invokes Mac builds securely over SSH." I will update this article after I have personally worked with the technology.

Android emulators and iOS simulators are essential to developing and debugging a .NET MAUI app targeting a mobile operating system. Layout design and compatibility testing is a lot easier with a emulator rather than packaging and deploying the app to a physical device. To deploy the app to an emulator, VS 2022 builds, creates, and attaches a temporary package compatible with the target operating system. This is a resource intensive process. After initial layout design, most development and debugging is preformed targeting Windows which builds and deploys much more quickly. Provisioning emulators early in the development cycle is worth the effort.

Both Android emulators and iOS simulators require the .NET Muti-platform App UI development workload. You can install or verify the workload from the VS 2022 menu. Tools > Get Tools and Features.