Welcome to the Sands of MAUI—newsletter-style issues dedicated to bringing together the latest .NET MAUI content relevant to developers.
A particle of sand—tiny and innocuous. But put a lot of sand particles together and we have something big—a force to reckon with. It is the smallest grains of sand that often add up to form massive beaches, dunes and deserts.
.NET developers are excited with the reality of .NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI)—the evolution of modern .NET cross-platform developer technology stack. With stable tooling and a rich ecosystem, .NET MAUI empowers developers to build native cross-platform apps for mobile/desktop from single shared codebase, while inviting web technologies in the mix.
While it may take a long flight to reach the sands of MAUI island, developer excitement around .NET MAUI is quite palpable with all the created content. Like the grains of sand, every piece of news/article/documentation/video/tutorial/livestream contributes toward developer experiences in .NET MAUI and we grow a community/ecosystem willing to learn and help.
Sands of MAUI is a humble attempt to collect all the .NET MAUI awesomeness in one place. Here’s what is noteworthy for the week of June 9, 2025:
.NET MAUI is built to enable .NET developers to create cross-platform apps for Android, iOS, macOS and Windows, with deep platform integrations, native UI and hybrid web experiences. Modern app users demand rich UX from cross-platform apps, and developers can use all the help—.NET MAUI and Telerik UI are here to oblige. Displaying lots of data client-side can be challenging, and Héctor Pérez wrote up a nice article to help—exploring the .NET MAUI DataPager control.
.NET MAUI developers can leverage UI components like CollectionView or DataGrid to display large collections of data, but optimum UX demands easy navigation, and paging is an established intuitive way to achieve it. Say hello to the DataPager UI in Progress Telerik UI for .NET MAUI—designed to enable pagination over any data collection, to split long list of items into pages automatically.
Héctor showcases the developer experience by first building a .NET MAUI app that shows a large collection of data from an API—and then bringing in the DataPager from Telerik UI for .NET MAUI. Paging through data happens automatically with a nice abstraction—the PagedSource collection does the magic during data binding. Héctor walks through variety of ways developers can configure the DataPager with various APIs, as well as customizable styling options—a powerful paging solution to display large data collections with wonderful UX.
The .NET MAUI team hosts monthly Community Standup livestreams to celebrate all things .NET MAUI and provide updates—a wonderful way to bring the developer community together. A lot of good things are happening in .NET MAUI as a platform, and developer community excitement is noticeable. David Ortinau, Rachel Kang and Shane Neuville recently hosted the June Community Standup—building accessible .NET MAUI apps.
After some usual banter, Rachel covered all the community news—there were good recaps from Microsoft Build and .NET MAUI content contributions from the developer community are always impressive. It was then time to bring on the special guests of the month, Guy Barker and Roberto Perez.
Accessibility isn’t just the right thing to do, but also good for business—there are increasing number of regulations to enforce digital inclusivity and they all apply to .NET MAUI apps. Guy and Roberto talked through the experience of building an accessible version of the popular Solitaire game in .NET MAUI—there are lots of considerations around semantic properties and differences between touch experiences on mobile versus mouse/keyboard on desktop. There is plenty of help for .NET MAUI developers toward building modern accessible cross-platform apps—one needs to understand nuances and care about user experiences.
It is the age of AI, and there is a huge opportunity for .NET developers to infuse apps with solutions powered by generative AI and large/small language models. Modern AI is also opportunity to streamline and automate developer workflows for better productivity. For .NET MAUI developers, AI can be a nice way to add customizable interactivity to apps, and there is plenty of help with AI models, tooling and abstractions. Coming off from showing the latest AI integrations at Microsoft Build 2025, David Ortinau wrote up an article for a wonderful showcase app—using AI Foundry with .NET MAUI.
The only thing better than a to-do list sample app is an AI-infused to-do list sample app. David starts off with Azure AI Foundry—a comprehensive platform designed for building, deploying and managing AI applications, with a wide variety of AI models to choose from. Using the standardized abstractions offered by Microsoft.Extensions.AI, developers can easily integrate AI Foundry calls from a .NET MAUI app—the popular IChatClient interface aids in communications. For each new sample project, AI is able to add a bunch of contextual to-do tasks—a wonderful showcase app demonstrating how developers can make app user experience more intelligent using the latest AI models and tooling.
.NET MAUI is the evolution of modern .NET cross-platform development stack, allowing developers to reach mobile and desktop form factors from a single shared codebase. While .NET MAUI is the shiny new thing, many desktop enterprise workflows still run on trusted WPF apps—nothing wrong if WPF is running the business on .NET Framework or modern .NET runtimes. However, there may be demands to modernize the app to make things cross-platform, and UI can be a big consideration. Thankfully, Dimitrina Petrova wrote up a nice article speaking to the realities—how to migrate WPF UI components to .NET MAUI.
Progress Software maintains a suite of UI components and libraries/tools to help developers be more successful—Telerik UI for all things .NET, and Kendo UI for all things JavaScript. Many battle-tested WPF apps use Telerik UI, and DataGrids are often the workhorse. Dimitrina considers the challenges if such a WPF app were to be migrated to .NET MAUI. While the platforms are different, it helps to understand the UI stack changes in .NET MAUI that makes apps run on Windows/macOS desktop as well as mobile—APIs, styling, accessibility, document processing and templating are all considerations. Thankfully, Telerik UI between WPF and .NET MAUI is surprisingly similar, and developers will get to reuse much of their expertise and investments with heavy-lifting UI like the DataGrid. Cheers to modernizing responsibly.
Building software is an intrinsically creative process that transforms ideas into product realities—but over time, the rigors of software maintenance and delivery can make the spark feel dim. Coming out of Build, Microsoft introduced a fundamental shift in how development teams can work, and Amanda Silver, Mario Rodriguez and Den Delimarsky wrote up the announcement—Agentic DevOps reimagining every phase of the developer lifecycle.
Agentic DevOps is a new approach where AI agents work alongside development teams throughout the entire software development lifecycle. Compared to coding assistance, these are autonomous agents that can take on entire development tasks with human guidance/approval. To showcase the developer experience, the article talks through building out the Octopets app—envisioned as an app that helps pet owners find pet-friendly locations and connect with other pet owners.
Starting with GitHub Copilot on GitHub.com, ideas can turn into product requirements document. As the app gets built, the Copilot coding agent can join the development team, working autonomously fixing issues with human approval. Next phases involve translating Figma designs to code reality, end-to-end testing with Playwright and monitoring app health—AI agentic modes can help every step of the way. While early days, it is inspiring to see what AI agents can accomplish—with coding and DevOps task automation with AI, developers can rediscover the creative joys of software development.
That’s it for now.
We’ll see you next week with more awesome content relevant to .NET MAUI.
Cheers, developers!
Sam Basu is a technologist, author, speaker, Microsoft MVP, gadget lover and Developer Advocacy Manager for Developer Tooling products. With a long developer background, he now spends much of his time advocating modern web/mobile/cloud development platforms on Microsoft/Telerik/Kendo UI technology stacks. His spare times call for travel, fast cars, cricket and culinary adventures with the family.