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Preparing Xamarin.Android Apps

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Important

Visual Studio App Center is scheduled for retirement on March 31, 2025. While you can continue to use Visual Studio App Center until it is fully retired, there are several recommended alternatives that you may consider migrating to.

Learn more about support timelines and alternatives.

This guide provides instructions for preparing Xamarin.UITests for upload to App Center Test. Select your platform to begin.

Important

Running Xamarin.UITest on Windows requires setting the ANDROID_HOME environment variable with the path to the Android SDK

To prepare a Xamarin.Android app and Xamarin.UITests for submission to App Center for Test:

  1. Ensure that the app requests the INTERNET permission by inserting this snippet <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" /> into the AndroidManifest.xml, outside the <application> tag.
  2. Disable Use Shared Mono Runtime. The Shared Mono Runtime will prevent Xamarin.UITests from running in App Center for Test, and the CLI will throw the error "Mono Shared Runtime is not supported."

Visual studio for Mac

Disable Use Shared Mono Runtime. The Shared Mono Runtime will prevent Xamarin.UITests from running in App Center for Test.

In Visual Studio for Mac, open Build > Android Build then select Project Options. On the General tab, look for Packaging and Deployment and uncheck the Use Shared Mono Runtime checkbox.

Remove Use Shared Runtime (macOS)

Visual Studio (Windows)

Disable Use Shared Mono Runtime. The Shared Mono Runtime will prevent Xamarin.UITests from running in App Center for Test, and may throw a Mono dependency error during upload.

In Visual Studio 2019, open the project properties, and select the Android Options tab. In the first section, look for Packaging Properties, then uncheck the Use Shared Runtime checkbox.

Remove Use Shared Runtime (Windows)

Generating an upload command

Once a test suite is prepared, you can setup a test run to upload and run your tests. That process will generate a prototype command line like this:

appcenter test run uitest --app "MyOrg/MyApp" --devices "MyOrg/MyDeviceSet" --app-path pathToFile.apk --test-series "main" --locale "en_US" --build-dir pathToUITestBuildDir

The command line requires some modifications:

  1. You must provide paths for the arguments --app-path & --build-dir.
  2. You may need to specify the UITest package you're using, if the CLI can't automatically find it: --uitest-tools-dir /Users/{your username}/.nuget/packages/xamarin.uitest/{UITest version}/tools