Help! What will happen to my app when Xamarin support ends in May 2024?

I’ve had a couple of people asking me what will happen to their Xamarin apps when support for Xamarin.forms ends in May 2024. Will they be removed from the app stores? Can they still be updated? It’s not always easy to piece things together from the documentation, especially if you don’t spend a lot of time in the mobile eco-system, so hopefully this will clear things up.

Your apps won't be removed from the stores

First of all, don't worry, your apps will continue to be available in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store after the May support cut off. They won’t be removed from the stores, and they will continue to keep working as they have. However if your apps are critical to your business, and / or you need to continue updating them, you should take action ASAP (I’ll get into that shortly).

You can still update your apps, but only for a limited time

After May 2024, you'll still be able to update your apps for a limited time. On iOS, you'll be able to build the last supported version of Xamarin with Xcode 15 and upload it to the store for as long as Xcode 15 is supported. For context, the minimum version of Xcode currently supported is 14 as of April 2023. If the current patterns continue, 15 will be the minimum next April (2024), then 16 the following year (2025). At that point, you'd no longer be able to release updates. On Android, it’s a similar story. You’ll be able to build apps for Android 13, which should be releasable until around August 2024.

Beware, new bugs in Xamarin could block updates

However if there is a bug or issue with Xamarin after May 2024, it won't be fixed. This means that if there is any new Xamarin issue that impacts your app, you wouldn't be able to fix it. I'd say it's fairly low risk, but for example if Apple or Google found and fixed a serious security issue, they could mandate that new updates had to include the fix, and this could block updates to apps since it wouldn't be added to Xamarin.

The app could survive into the future, or it could be removed

Into the future, if you don't need to make updates to the app, it could sit there happily for some years to come. Be aware though that from time to time Apple and Google have both mandated that apps have to be updated to remain in the store. If that happened again, they'd likely give a reasonable amount of notice, but after that notice, the app would be removed from the store. If you wanted to keep it in the store, you'd need to create a working version in a framework other than Xamarin.

What you need to do

What (if anything) you need to do now depends on the function of your apps.

If an app is business critical and / or you need to be able to keep updating it, you need to migrate to a new framework ASAP so you can keep it working. This could be a chunky, high-risk piece of work, so don’t delay. For simple apps, updating to MAUI (Microsoft's replacement technology for Xamarin) could work. However MAUI is currently quite buggy and difficult to work with, so for more complex apps, it could be worth moving to a different framework, such as React Native, Flutter or even full native.

If an app isn’t critical AND you don't need to update it, you could leave it as is to spend the rest of its days peacefully grazing in the app stores, until it eventually fades away.