Managing app resources in Visual Studio for Mac

Important

Visual Studio for Mac is scheduled for retirement on August 31, 2024 in accordance with Microsoft’s Modern Lifecycle Policy. While you can continue to work with Visual Studio for Mac, there are several other options for developers on Mac such as the preview version of the new C# Dev Kit extension for VS Code.

Learn more about support timelines and alternatives.

App resource files, such as images, text files, and audio files, are necessary to your application but aren't compiled with the application. Each platform supported by Visual Studio for Mac handles these resources in different ways, as explained in the following guides:

Xamarin.Forms

Xamarin.Forms code runs on multiple platforms - each of which has its own filesystem and each file system dictates how to read and write to files. In Xamarin.Forms you can manage app resources by using the native file APIs on each platform, or by adding files as embedded resources.

Xamarin.iOS

Xamarin.Android

Xamarin.Mac

See also