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Android Mobile app

Requirements​

Before you start, you should have the recommended Tools and Libraries installed. You will also need to install:

  1. Visual Studio 2019 (required for a dependency not included yet in VS 2022; development can be done in VS 2022)
  2. dotnet Core 3.1 (latest)
    • Note: Even if you have an M1 Mac with ARM 64 architecture, you can install all x64 SDKs to run android
  3. Xamarin (Android)
  4. Android SDK 29

To make sure you have the Android SDK and Emulator installed:

  1. Open Visual Studio

  2. Click Tools > SDK Manager (under the Android subheading)

  3. Click the Tools tab

  4. Make sure the following items are installed:

    • Android SDK tools (at least one version of the command-line tools)
    • Android SDK Platform-Tools
    • Android SDK Build Tools (at least one version)
    • Android Emulator

  5. Click Apply Changes if you've marked anything for installation

If you've missed anything, Visual Studio should prompt you anyway.

Android Development Setup​

To set up a new virtual Android device for debugging:

  1. Click Tools > Device Manager (under the Android subheading)
  2. Click New Device
  3. Set up the device you want to emulate - you can just choose the Base Device and leave the default settings if you're unsure
  4. Visual Studio will then download the image for that device. The download progress is shown in the progress in the Android Device Manager dialog.
  5. Once this has completed, the emulated Android device will be available as a build target under Android > Debug > (name of device)

M1 Macs​

  1. Install and open Android Studio
  2. In the top navbar, click on Android Studio > Preferences > Appearance & Behavior (tab) > System Settings > Android SDK
  3. In the SDK Platforms tab, ensure the "Show Package Details" checkbox is checked (located in the bottom-right)
  4. Bellow each Android API you'll see several System Images, pick one of the ARM 64 v8a and wait for it to download
  5. Go to View > Tool Windows > Device Manager
  6. Inside Device Manager, create a device using the previously downloaded system image

Android SDK configuration

Testing and Debugging using the Android Emulator​

In order to access localhost:<port> resources in the Android Emulator when debugging using Xamarin studio on your mac natively, you'll need to configure the endpoint addresses using <http://10.0.2.2:<port>> in order to access localhost, which maps the Android proxy by design.