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Platform-specific C# code in Uno

Uno allows you to reuse views and business logic across platforms. Sometimes though you may want to write different code per platform. You may need to access platform-specific native APIs and 3rd-party libraries, or want your app to look and behave differently depending on the platform.

This guide covers multiple approaches to managing per-platform code in C#. See this guide for managing per-platform XAML.

Project structure

There are two ways to restrict code or XAML markup to be used only on a specific platform:

  • Use conditionals within a shared file
  • Place the code in a file which is only included in the desired platform head.

The structure of an Uno app created with the default Visual Studio template is explained in more detail here. The key point to understand is that files in a shared project referenced from a platform head are treated in exactly the same way as files included directly under the head, and are compiled together into a single assembly.

#if conditionals

The most basic means of authoring platform-specific code is to use #if conditionals:

#if MY_SYMBOL
Console.WriteLine("MY_SYMBOL is defined for this compilation");

If the supplied condition is not met, e.g. if MY_SYMBOL is not defined, then the enclosed code will be ignored by the compiler.

The following conditional symbols are predefined for each platform:

Platform Symbol
UWP NETFX_CORE
Android __ANDROID__
iOS __IOS__
WebAssembly HAS_UNO_WASM
MacOS __MACOS__
Skia HAS_UNO_SKIA

Note that you can combine conditionals with boolean operators, e.g. #if __ANDROID__ || __IOS__.

You can define your own conditional compilation symbols per project in the 'Build' tab in the project's properties.

Type aliases

Defining a type alias with the using directive, in combination with #if conditionals, can make for cleaner code. For example:

#if __ANDROID__
using _View = Android.Views.View;
#elif __IOS__
using _View = UIKit.UIView;
#else
using _View = Windows.UI.Xaml.UIElement;
#endif

...

public IEnumerable<_View> FindDescendants(FrameworkElement parent) => ...

Partial class definitions

Heavy usage of #if conditionals makes code hard to read and comprehend. A better approach is to use partial class definitions to split shared and platform-specific code.

A simple example

Shared code in PROJECTNAME.Shared/NativeWrapperControl.cs:

public partial class NativeWrapperControl : Control {

...

		protected override void OnApplyTemplate()
		{
			 base.OnApplyTemplate();
   
  			 _nativeView = CreateNativeView();
		}

Platform-specific code in PROJECTNAME.Droid/NativeWrapperControl.Android.cs:

public partial class NativeWrapperControl : Control {

...

		private View CreateNativeView() {
			... //Android-specific code
		}

Platform-specific code in PROJECTNAME.iOS/NativeWrapperControl.iOS.cs:

public partial class NativeWrapperControl : Control {

...

		private UIView CreateNativeView() {
			... //iOS-specific code
		}

You can use partial methods when only one platform needs specialized logic.