What Are .NET MAUI Applications?

By using .NET MAUI, you can build native mobile and native desktop apps with C# and XAML from a single shared code base. Because .NET MAUI is a cross-platform app development framework, you can write the code in a single Visual Studio project and run it on Android, iOS, Windows and MacOS devices. As the name suggests, you need to be familiar with .NET to build .NET MAUI apps.

.NET MAUI benefits from being built on .NET 6, which means that the framework offers first-class native desktop development support (whereas its predecessor Xamarin was mostly used for native mobile apps development), optimized performance and fast deployment.

An important .NET MAUI feature is that it is loosely coupled with native platform controls, relying on handlers as a layer of abstraction. The purpose of handlers in .NET MAUI is to reduce the amount of platform-specific code developers need to write, making UI customizations easier.

Applications built with .NET MAUI include the Microsoft 365 Admin app, the NBC Sports Next's Sports Engine team management mobile application, Escola Agil (Agile School in Portuguese), an app used by many schools across Brazil, and Irth Solutions’ risk management, damage prevention, and infrastructure protection mobile app. There’s nothing better than learning by exploring production-ready application code, so make sure you check out the .NET MAUI Demo Apps built by the experts on the Telerik UI for .NET MAUI team.

You can pick from many resources to help you learn .NET MAUI development, including the Microsoft documentation and the Telerik Blogs .NET MAUI section. To get a running start, try using ready-to-use .NET MAUI controls instead of building everything from scratch.