Xamarin VS Windows - IPhone does not show up - ios

I'm using Visual Studio for Windows and I have a Xamarin Forms app for Android and iOS. I mostly test physically on Android (since that is much easier) and I have tested on an IPhone as well about a year ago, which worked fine (without a mac). Now I plugged it in again and it doesn't work anymore: the IPhone does not show up in the debugging list.
I have:
Apple Developer account and I'm connected with this account from Visual Studio
Identifier for Bundle
Profile (created by VS itself, with Type 'Development')
What am I missing here? I haven't added the provisioning profile in my solution, is that something that needs to be done? Am I missing another step?
I hope someone can help.

For the exact breakdown on how to setup and get started with your iOS solution, follow Microsoft's Xamarin iOS on Windows guide.
The tl;dr though is: you absolutely need a Mac to run a Xamarin iOS project, even on windows. I do not know how you had your project setup last time, however this has been the case since Xamarin's debut. Although, you could also just have access to a Mac through network connection instead of having a physical Mac. Without a physical device, you can use the Mac's ios simulator. If you are planning on using a physical iphone though, said device needs to be plugged into the Mac and not the windows machine. Later MacOS do support wireless connections of trusted devices, but it is still a wireless connection from the iphone to the mac (needing to be on the same network).

Related

Why cant I build apps on my PC but I can on my mac? Xamarin

So I got my MacBook pro yesterday in hopes of developing some local apps to build on my phone.
And after setting everything up, Visual studio on my mac and XCode, and I already had Visual Studio on my PC things started messing up.
I tried debugging my app on my phone from my PC, with the phone connected to my PC ofcourse, didnt work, so I read around on the internet for a good 4 hours and it said that I should create a blank project in XCode, and for the Signing in preferences I had to choose Team, so I did and it debugged the application on my iphone when my iphone was connected to my Mac,
However I DONT want to code on Mac computers, I want to use my PC.
But everytime I try to debug the application from my PC it keeps saying
Could not find any available provisioning profiles for iOS.
I am running a iPhone 7 with the version 10.1.1 because I dont want to update due to various reasons.
I tried changing the Deployment target to something really low but that didnt fix it.
Why is this happening?
Visual representation of what the error looks like
Not sure if this picture helps, this is the project properties > iOS Bundle Signing
And my device log is empty aswell.. Why?
ANother error message saying it doesnt support
EDIT
I plugged it into the mac and now its visible in the Device log and I can see stuff happening in the device log but I still cant boot the project on my iPhone
Apple doesn't allow developing for iphone on a non IOS device. This simply means that you can't build apps on a Linux or Windows computer/laptop the normal way. You are stuck on building your project on an IOS device.
There are 2 options to fully develop on a Windows laptop though.
One way of doing so is by using your mac as a gateway to send your app from Windows to IOS to your phone. More info about this can be found here:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/xamarin/ios/get-started/installation/windows/
The second option is a newer one called Xamarin Live Player. You don't need to use a mac at all for developing, but you still need a mac if you want to publish the app. This option also works differently from normal development as you need to download an extra program on your phone.
https://www.xamarin.com/live
You could try to do manual provisioning. Create a development provisioning profile at the Apple Developer site, and have XCode download it for you. Then it should show on your PC for you to select.
See the Xamarin documentation on manual provisioning for some more details:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/ios/get-started/installation/device-provisioning/manual-provisioning?tabs=vsmac#creating-a-development-provisioning-profile

Test website on iphone from linux

I have a website and client says it is not working on his iPhone6 browser. Tested layout with chrome dev tools, but most likely problem is not in layout, but some js error occurred.
I have a linux desktop and android device. Is there any way to install/emulate iOS anywhere?
UPD
Ok, this is impossible without device or laptop with iOS. I'll try to install it on vmware or virtualbox.
UPD2
One more way to see the error - setup sentry to log js errors and ask client to test it again
iOS could be emulated only through Xcode on Mac OS.
Even though, you always can emulate Mac OS ;)
I had the same problem. This website saved me: https://appetize.io/app/standalone_2p3b4d0weqbr42d31n6cfqby74?device=iphone8&scale=75&orientation=portrait&osVersion=13.7
The emulator that you see on the front page only works for 60 seconds but if you sign up (and don't choose a paid subscription) you can still test it for free in an emulator that can run for longer time. There you can also choose phone type, iOS version etc...

Possible to simulate iOS app with Visual Studio using Windows PC only

I apologize if this has been covered elsewhere. I have researched this topic to the best of my ability but I am still unsure of the answers I have found. I am a senior in college and I am developing an app to essentially act as a remote control for a device that my team is building for our senior capstone project. Everything is progressing fine for the Android app etc., but we are interested in developing an iOS app as well. We were steered toward Visual Studio 2015 or later for this since none of us own a Mac. We do not have an iPhone and we are not interested in trying to actually sell or deploy the app officially. All we really need is a means to simulate the iOS app on a PC and demonstrate that the functionality is still there to control our device.
I have seen several posts stating the requirement of a Mac regardless to, at the least, handle conversions for any app development on a Windows machine. I have also found a couple posts with a potential work around that involved installing a Mac VM, though I am not sure if these are "legal" solutions or not? We do not have it in our project budget to purchase any Mac systems, OS, or cloud services to develop the app. I have only done light work on Macs unrelated to programming so I know very little about what is possible regarding VMs etc.
At this point I am looking for some clarity on whether there is an actual legitimate and legal means to simulate an iOS app using Visual Studio and a Windows PC only? In our case, we would need the simulation to be able to connect to our device wirelessly and control it. It is OK that the physical device would actually be a Windows laptop, the CS department just wants to see that we have developed software that could in theory work on an iOS device. We would be presenting our work in detail during weekly updates so the solution would need to be above the table in all regards.
I apologize if this is answered elsewhere. The options in Visual Studio and most of the guides online are pretty unclear about what you can and can't do specifically under the various project types. We didn't want to get too deep into development with C# only to hit an impassable wall and lose all that time. It seems Apple keeps everything under close guard so I was suspicious about the VM alternatives to having a Mac. Thanks in advance for you time!
You must have a Mac to develop iOS apps, either to act as a build server, or as your primary development machine. Even when using Xamarin, the build tools and iOS Simulator are provided by Apple and will only run on Apple's OS. You can only legally run Mac OS on Apple hardware.
Just to add to the previous (and correct answer imo) which states that you need a mac to legally build IOS apps.
You don't need a powerful mac in order to do the building. I've been using a mac mini as a build server for a year now with no major problems. I wouldn't want to do any actual development on this machine, but it's great for sitting in the corner and doing builds sent via visual studio.
You can still do all IOS Dev on windows with visual studio (connected to the mac for building). Additionally with the enterprise version of VS you can run the IOS simulator on the PC, but again it requires a connected Mac. Although I'm hoping that they will eventually bring this functionality back to community users.
In your specific (academic) case whether or not you do manage to get a mac for building, I would suggest looking at Xamarin Test Cloud for providing evidence that your software will work on a large number of devices.

usb debugging, mono for android on vmware windows 8?

I'm using the android emulator in this environment (VMware fusion5/windows 8/vs2012-mono for android) and it's working ok for degugging, but I'd like to switch a license to this machine so I can use it for actual device testing. Since you are limited with the number of times you can repurpose a license with xamarin, I'd like to know if it'll actually work before I activate the license on this environment. Anyone doing it?
Thanks.
In case anyone needs to know, it works fine. VMware sees the device when it's plugged in and asks if you want to connect to windows or mac. Choosing windows lets adb see the device.

Trying to debug a web site on iPad, but the device doesn't appear under Develop menu in Safari on my Mac

According to iOS Developer Library Debugging guide it should be possible to debug a web site in Mobile Safari (on iOS 6) remotely from desktop Safari, through a usual USB connection. But after completing described steps (I turn on Web Inspector on iPad, connect it via USB to my Mac, switch on Develop menu form the preferences) I still do not see any device item under Develop menu in desktop Safari. Is there any other crucial requirement for this to work? Minimal Mac OS X version maybe? I have 10.6.8.
It turns out that support for remote debugging was added only in Safari 6, which, for some unexplainable reason is not available for Snow Leopard, only for Lion (in limited version) and up. So I bought an upgrade to Mountain Lion and it simply works now.
Apple wants to force the developers to upgrade to the recent OSX (which is bundled with the recent Developer Tools).
But there is an working way for debugging iOS6+ Safari for developers using OSX 10.6.8 / Windows / whatever:
WeinRE
It works just fine like the official way. Maybe Apple took this project for their debugging (just a guess).
In the preferences for Safari on iOS, there is an option under advanced that allows the toggling of 'Web Inspector', which turns on and off this feature (at least this is on iOS 6, I don't have older devices to check this on).
There is also a limitation that:
Important: You can only inspect apps on devices that have been transferred to your device from Xcode. You cannot inspect apps that have been downloaded from the App Store, even if it is your app.
So I expect that developer apps are the only other ones that you can manipulate in this manner.

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