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Win 11 Update Borks .NET MAUI Projects Built on .NET 8: 'Microsoft, What Have You Done?'
Windows 11 has been in the news lately because of the sunsetting of Win 10, but a developer found the latest update to Microsoft's OS borked his .NET MAUI projects built with .NET 8.
On Microsoft's Learn site, Jeff Rush yesterday complained that after an Oct. 15 Win 11 update, his previously stable .NET MAUI projects stopped building across all platforms--including iOS, Android, and Windows--despite working flawlessly just a day earlier. Furthermore, he attempted to upgrade to .NET 9 but was blocked by a requirement for Xcode 26, which he couldn't meet--since his current setup uses Xcode 16.4 and upgrading isn't an option.
"Microsoft, what have you done?" he asked. "Why must you release updates that completely shatter the hard work of developers? Why must we spend days/weeks trying to 'fix' what your updates break? It truly is the most frustrating aspect of using Microsoft technology."
With a sense of urgency he noted he was using Visual Studio Community 2022 version 17.14.18 and that his customers were waiting on a new build of his project.
Michael Le, identified as being part of Microsoft external support staff, today responded by explaining that since .NET 8 for MAUI is no longer supported as of May 2025, the best path forward is to upgrade to .NET 9--and that doing so doesn't require upgrading to Xcode 26. Instead, developers can pin the MAUI workload version to one compatible with their current Xcode 16.4 setup.
Key steps he outlined include:
- Create a global.json file to specify the .NET SDK and workload version (e.g., 9.0.306 SDK with 9.0.305 workloads).
- Update the project's .csproj file to target .NET 9 across all platforms using the
<TargetFrameworks> property.
- Clean the environment by clearing NuGet caches and deleting bin, obj, and .vs folders.
- Reinstall MAUI workloads using
dotnet workload install maui, and verify with dotnet workload list.
- If issues persist, run
dotnet workload repair to fix any broken installations.
In short, he reassured that developers can move forward with .NET 9 and MAUI without needing the latest Xcode, as long as they configure their environment correctly.
Editor's Update:
Rush responded to Le that his fix didn't work in a long and detailed explanation of how he tried to follow the guidance. I apologize for missing that comment. Stay tuned to see how this is resolved.
About the Author
David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.