VS2026 vs iOS NET9 / XCode16.4 - Is this a supported scenario?

[mobilewares]

Hi,

(Apologies in advance if answered somewhere else).

I have installed the new VS2026/final release & was hoping to debug our iOS NET9 MAUI App using my paired MacOS which has XCode 16.4. (This works fine under VS2022).

However when I go to launch it (using Remote Simulator) - I get the error message 'This version of .NET for iOS (26.0.9766) requires Xcode 26.0. The current version of Xcode is 16.4. Either install Xcode 26.0, or use a different version of .NET for iOS.'

I thought VS2026 was supposed to work with XCode 16.4 (which is iOS18 not iOS26) - saw that in one of the release notes? I can see however when pairing to the Mac it's definitely only remotely installing the NET10 workloads and not NET9 ones.

Is MAUI NET9 iOS with VS2026 (and Mac/XCode16.4) a supported scenario - or is VS2026 iOS MAUI Dev restricted to NET10 (and XCode26)?

Unfortunately the docs/readme's are very confusing & bit of a mess. If I try to follow the links for VS2026 MAUI support via VS2026 site - it takes me through to the Debugging MAUI/iOS pages for NET10 (which mention VS2026 but no mention of NET9). If I change NET framework to NET9 on this page then the equivalent page has no mention of VS2026 at all (only VS2022). I have been unable to locate any Wiki here or elsewhere that explains these requirements although did see that VS2026 is supposed to support XCode16.4 in one of the MSFT developer blogs(?).

Note - updating the MAUI project to NET10 is not an option right now - client does not want this yet (we have planned it for Jan-Feb after there's been a couple of service releases and there's some additional budget to optimize for iOS26).

Side Note : VS2026 is working just fine with Android MAUI NET9 apps - in fact it's way more stable and absolutely love the new 'Quiet' mode output verbosity (finally a way to hide all the unwanted Android device messages from debug which I've wanted for years). Hoping the other verbosity setting (in other option menu) will allow similar in iOS too as it's a hug issue there.

thanks
Niall

[mobilewares]

Ok looks like VS2026 completely killed my VS2022 iOS Dev environment. These products clearly do not work 'side by side' - my advice avoid VS2026 if you are still doing NET9 MAUI iOS dev - clearly this scenario has not been tested by the team.

It would appear post install of VS2026, the Pair to Mac / iOS debugging is locked into NET10 MAUI (in VS2022 when it's pairing you can see it's only deploying/updating the NET10/iOS26 components) - tried absolutely everything I could think of including removing/repairing workloads and trying to force NET9 MAUI workloads only.

Post uninstall & rollback to previous VS2022 release (7.14.19) it's now finally deploying NET9 components again, but I am experiencing issue where the list of Simulators is incorrect - will not show all the simulators that are available (seems to just cut off the list). Most notably none of the iPhone 16 emulators are coming up (which are normally at end of the list) - however can see other 18.3/18.4 simulators like iPhone14.

Anyhow several hours wasted (and still not all fixed to where I was this morning before the updates) - really not happy.

[mobilewares]

Ok have filed this as a bug/issue - please comment there. Other users reporting same issue too.
https://github.com/dotnet/maui/issues/32573

This is super frustrating - means I can't use VS2026 or NET10 for other projects (not just MAUI ones) on my dev machine right now as long as I need to support current client's NET9 iOS App.

I'm not clear if this is an intentionally non-supported scenario or just a bug in VS2022/VS2026 that needs to be fixed up (seems like it could be fixed by ensuring VS2022 deploying only NET9 components to the paired Mac OS). I'm sure this is scenario that will impact a lot of others too - certainly any devs out there who need to support NET9 iOS MAUI projects for the immediate future will face this problem.

[ronanj2]

Isn't just likely that your VS2026 install removed .NET9. You can install the .NET9 sdk and the appropriate workloads and the app will run just fine.