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Xamarin.Forms Platform Features

Android Platform Features

Adding Android-specific functionality to Xamarin.Forms apps

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last updated: 2016-01

Platform Support

The default Xamarin.Forms Android project uses an older style of control renderering that was common prior to Android 5.0. Applications built using the template have FormsApplicationActivity as the base class of their main activity.

Material Design via AppCompat

Xamarin.Forms also has an optional FormsAppCompatActivity that uses AppCompat features provided by Android to implement Material Design themes.

To add Material Design themes to your Xamarin.Forms Android project, follow the installation instructions for AppCompat support

Here is the Todo sample with the default FormsApplicationActivity:

And this is the same code after upgrading the project to use FormsAppCompatActivity (and adding the additional theme information):

NOTE: When using the new FormsAppCompatActivity, the base classes for some Android custom renderers will be different.

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