Xamarin.Mobile
A cross-platform API for accessing phone functionality like contacts, camera, and geolocation in iOS, Android, and Windows Phone apps.
What is Xamarin.Mobile?
Xamarin.Mobile is a cross-platform API that provides a unified interface for accessing common mobile device features like contacts, camera, and geolocation. It allows developers to write once and run on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone without rewriting platform-specific code for basic phone functionality.
Mobile developers using Xamarin/C# who need to access device features across multiple platforms without writing separate implementations for each operating system.
Developers choose Xamarin.Mobile because it significantly reduces platform-specific code, accelerates development time, and provides a consistent API surface for working with core phone features across all supported mobile platforms.
Overview
A project to use a common way of accessing phone functionality
Use Cases
Best For
- Building cross-platform mobile apps that need to access device contacts
- Adding camera functionality to Xamarin-based iOS and Android apps
- Implementing location services in multiplatform mobile applications
- Reducing platform-specific code when working with phone hardware features
- Developing business apps that require address book integration
- Creating media capture applications for multiple mobile platforms
Not Ideal For
- Production apps requiring stable, non-preview APIs
- Projects needing access to a broader range of device features beyond contacts, camera, and geolocation
- Developers not using Xamarin or C# for mobile development
- Apps targeting only a single platform where native APIs might be more efficient
Pros & Cons
Pros
Provides a unified API for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, significantly reducing platform-specific code as emphasized in the project's philosophy.
Includes methods like RequestPermission() to handle platform-specific permissions seamlessly, as shown in the contacts and geolocation examples.
Offers uniform interfaces for key features like contacts, camera, and geolocation, with code snippets demonstrating cross-platform usage.
Accelerates multiplatform app development by abstracting common device interactions, making it faster to implement core functionality.
Cons
Marked as a preview release and subject to API changes, which can lead to breaking updates and instability in production environments.
Only supports contacts, geolocation, and camera; other common device features like sensors, notifications, or Bluetooth are not included.
Requires the Microsoft.Bcl.Async NuGet package for Windows Phone 7.1, adding extra setup steps and potential compatibility issues.
Frequently Asked Questions
Related Projects
Shiny.NET Framework for Backgrounding & Device Hardware Services (iOS, MacCatalyst, Android, & Windows)
Xamarin.EssentialsXamarin.Essentials is no longer supported. Migrate your apps to .NET MAUI, which includes Maui.Essentials.
userdialogsA cross platform library that allows you to call for standard user dialogs from a core .net standard library, Actionsheets, alerts, confirmations, loading, login, progress, prompt, toast... async just for fun
Fingerprint PluginXamarin and MvvMCross plugin for authenticate a user via fingerprint sensor
Found a gem we're missing?
Open-Awesome is built by the community, for the community. Submit a project, suggest an awesome list, or help improve the catalog on GitHub.