Visual Studio includes an Android SDK Manager that you use to download Android SDK tools, platforms, and other components that you need for developing Xamarin.Android apps. Overview This guide explains how to use the Xamarin Android SDK Manager in Visual Studio and Visual Studio for Mac. As announced on Apple’s developer news site, Apple has just released Xcode 9.4 final. The Xamarin team is proceeding as usual to test for compatibility and publish updated versions of Xamarin.iOS and the Visual Studio Tools for Xamarin to align with the new version of Xcode.
Understanding Android API levels • • 17 minutes to read • Contributors • • • In this article Xamarin.Android has several Android API level settings that determine your app's compatibility with multiple versions of Android. This guide explains what these settings mean, how to configure them, and what effect they have on your app at run time. Quick start Xamarin.Android exposes three Android API level project settings: • – Specifies which framework to use in building your application. This API level is used at compile time by Xamarin.Android. • – Specifies the oldest Android version that you want your app to support. This API level is used at run time by Android. • – Specifies the version of Android that your app is intended to run on.
This API level is used at run time by Android. Before you can configure an API level for your project, you must install the SDK platform components for that API level. For more information about downloading and installing Android SDK components, see. • • Normally, all three Xamarin.Android API levels are set to the same value. On the Application page, set Compile using Android version (Target Framework) to the latest stable API version (or, at a minimum, to the Android version that has all of the features you need). In the following screenshot, the Target Framework is set to Android 7.1 (API Level 25 - Nougat): On the Android Manifest page, set the Minimum Android version to Use Compile using SDK version and set the Target Android version to the same value as the Target Framework version (in the following screenshot, the Target Android Framework is set to Android 7.1 (Nougat)): If you want to maintain backward compatibility with an earlier version of Android, set Minimum Android version to target to the oldest version of Android that you want your app to support. (Note that API Level 14 is the minimum API level required for.) The following example configuration supports Android versions from API Level 14 thru API level 25: Normally, all three Xamarin.Android API levels are set to the same value.
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Set Target framework to the latest stable API version (or, at a minimum, to the Android version that has all of the features you need). To set the Target framework, navigate to Build > General in the Project Options. In the following screenshot, the Target Framework is set to Use the latest installed platform (8.0): The Minimum and Target Android version settings can be found under Build > Android Application in Project Options. Set the Minimum Android version to Automatic - use target framework version and set the Target Android version to the same value as the Target Framework version.
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In the following screenshot, the Target Android Framework is set to Android 8.0 (API level 26) to match the Target Framework setting above: If you want to maintain backward compatibility with an earlier version of Android, change Minimum Android version to the oldest version of Android that you want your app to support. Note that API Level 14 is the minimum API level required for. For example, the following configuration supports Android versions as early as API Level 14: If your app supports multiple Android versions, your code must include runtime checks to ensure that your app works with the Minimum Android version setting (see below for details). If you are consuming or creating a library, see below for best practices in configuring API level settings for libraries.