Xamarin Forms for Windows Desktop app?

Question

I have a need to create a desktop application that can run on Windows machines (Windows 7, 8, 10 and Windows Server). I understand I can use Classic WPF, but prefer to use Xamarin Forms.

Does XF support Windows Desktop apps? If so, are there any gotchas to be aware of?

Answer 1

The next release of Xamarin Forms, Xamarin Forms 3, is going to add full support for desktop apps on Windows, Mac OS and Linux. The MacOS support is in preview now, but the Windows support is still in development.

As I understand it, the plan is to use WPF for the Windows support, so your solution would include a WPF project in addition to each of the other platform specific projects. That will allow development of traditional desktop Windows apps, rather than UWP type apps.

The hope/assumption here is that, because these are WPF apps they should therefore be able to run on versions of Windows that don't support UWP apps - Windows 7 and Server 2008 for example.

There's more on what's coming in Xamarin Forms 3 on the Xamarin Blog here, and also in the Microsoft Build 2017 talk by David Ortinau.

I was at a talk by Xamarin TSP Michael Sivers last night and he mentioned that there are discussions ongoing about a XAML standard that could be adopted by both Xamarin and WPF which makes a lot of sense in the context of Xamarin forms apps on WPF.