On August 12th, Microsoft rolled out the seventh preview of .NET MAUI in .NET 10, introducing more performance improvements and some improvements in controls. This preview focuses on compile‑time XAML processing, richer media metadata support, safer UI layouts, and refined toolbar APIs.
MAUI is an acronym that stands for Multiplatform Application UI. According to Microsoft, it’s an evolution of Xamarin and Xamarin Forms frameworks, unifying separate target libraries and projects into a single project for multiple devices. Currently, MAUI supports writing applications that run on Android 5+, iOS 12.2+, macOS 12+ (as Mac Catalyst), Samsung Tizen, Windows 10 version 1809+, or Windows 11. There are no changes in the supported minimum platforms from the version 9, released last year.
XAML markup is now compiled at build time instead of being interpreted at runtime. This change reduces app startup latency, surfaces XAML errors earlier in the developer workflow, and enables developers to inspect the generated code for gaining a deeper insight. In order to enable build-time XAML compilation, developer must add the EnablePreviewFeatures property in the project and decorate their root namespace with XamlProcessing attribute.
<PropertyGroup>
<EnablePreviewFeatures>true</EnablePreviewFeatures>
</PropertyGroup>
[assembly: XamlProcessing(XamlInflator.SourceGen)]
namespace MyApp;
When selecting images via MediaPicker control, MAUI now can handle embedded EXIF metadata, such as orientation, timestamps, or geolocation data. This makes image handling richer in features (such as automatic rotation of the photos) and more reliable for apps that rely on metadata. The new update also preserves any existing EXIF metadata in the image when passed downstream after being picked.
This release adds several new features for the Safe Area, the feature in MAUI that prevents content being rendered outside the device-specific screen space that can be overlaid with other content (camera notch, rounded corners and similar UI elements). Layout logic around notches, rounded corners, and display cutouts is now smarter, giving developers finer control over content positioning across devices with varying safe areas. The developers add the SafeAreaEdges property to the content control and choose between several options to show their content, namely:
public enum SafeAreaRegions
{
None = 0, // Edge-to-edge content (no safe area padding)
SoftInput = 1, // Always pad for keyboard/soft input
Container = 2, // Flow under keyboard, stay out of bars/notch
Default = 4, // Platform default behavior
All = int.MaxValue // Obey all safe area insets
}
The toolbars in .NET MAUI 10 Preview 7 can now include secondary items, which will be rendered as device-specific secondary menu items. To do so, the ToolbarItem markup has to include the Order property, set to either Primary or Secondary. Usually, the secondary items are hidden behind an ellipsis in the action menu.
Finally, several new APIs have been added to controls, such as controling pickers’ open and close states programatically, search handler’s hide or show soft keyboard or exposing TabbedPageManager class. Some deprecated APIs have been removed in this preview, for example Accelerator class was removed from Microsoft.Maui.Controls and ClickGestureRecognizer was removed in favor of TapGestureRecognizer.
Developers’ feedback to this new release is generally positive. Stuart Ballard said on the Microsoft DevBlog:
Xaml source generator sounds awesome – is there a reason why it’s limited to MAUI rather than being general-purpose and usable with WPF etc?
A post on windowsforum.com stated that Preview 7 is a consolidation pass
and a late-stage milestone
focusing on quality improvements across MAUI. Although not a direct opinion, it reinforces the community’s understanding: Preview 7 is less about flashy new features and more about polishing what’s there already.
Readers can refer to GitHub official MAUI repository for complete release notes.
