Best Xamarin books You Should Read to Build Cross Platform Mobile Applications

Xamarin is a cross-platform development platform. Using a C# shared codebase, developers can use Xamarin tools to build applications and user interface for native Android, iOS, and Windows app. They can also share almost the same code across multiple platforms including Windows and MacOS. According to Xamarin officials, over 1.4 million developers are using Xamarin's products in 120 countries around the world as of April 2017.

If you're a C# or .NET developer and finding a platform that can help you to build native mobile applications that run on multi-platforms, then you should choose Xamarin. To get started with Xamarin, here I provided a list of best xamarin development book.

Mastering Xamarin.Forms
Author: Ed Snider
Published at: 30/01/2016
ISBN: 1785287192

Mastering Xamarin.Forms is an easy to follow, code-rich book that'll help you to master the Xamarin.Forms to build useful, cross-platform mobile app. This guide follows a step-by-step approach to teach you the basic and advanced tools of Xamarin. With this guide, you'll learn to use the components of the Xamarin.Forms toolkit to develop an effective, robust mobile app architecture. If you're a C# developer or familiar with Xamarin.Forms platform, then this is the best book for you.

What you'll learn:

  • Using architecture patterns to build more robust apps with Xamarin.Forms
  • Implementing the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern and data-binding in Xamarin.Forms mobile apps
  • Working with the Xamarin.Forms navigation API for  a custom ViewModel-centric navigation service
  • Leverage the inversion of control
  • Using dependency injection patterns in Xamarin.Forms mobile apps
  • Working with online and offline data in Xamarin.Forms mobile apps
  • Using platform-specific APIs to build rich custom user interfaces
  • Testing both business logic and user interface code in Xamarin.Forms mobile apps
  • Maximize the testability, flexibility, and overall quality of your Xamarin.Forms mobile app
  • Improving mobile app quality with analytics and crash reporting using Xamarin Insights


iOS Development with Xamarin Cookbook - More than 100 Recipes, Solutions, and Strategies for Simpler iOS Development
Author: Dimitris Tavlikos
Published at: 25/08/2014
ISBN: 1849698929

This book is useful to C# developers who want to build iOS applications. This book offers recipes with step-by-step instructions to help you learn how to use the features of Xamarin to build effective and robust iOS applications. With this guide, you'll acquire necessary knowledge and skills to become an impressive iOS developer using C#.

What you'll learn:

  • Installing Xamarin.iOS with Xamarin Studio
  • Exploring the new features of Xamarin and learn how to use them
  • Designing an application's User Interface with Xcode
  • Interacting with Device Hardware
  • Managing multimedia resources such as photos and videos captured by the device camera
  • Building location-aware applications using the built-in GPS, compass, and mapping features
  • Using the accelerometer to capture and respond to devise motion
  • Adding multitasking features to provide a user-friendly experience
  • Integrating Graphics and Animation in your application
  • Exploring new iOS 7 features


Xamarin Cross Platform Development Cookbook
Author: George Taskos
Published at: 28/03/2016
ISBN: 1785880535

Xamarin Cross-Platform Development Cookbook offers a comprehensive, recipe-based approach to help you build effective cross-platform mobile apps in the three major mobile app stores that share up to 95% of the same code. If you're already a mobile developer with experience in C#, then this book is for you. This book is an essential reference that'll teach you how to create, test, and deploy native mobile applications. You'll also be able to create custom layouts for each platform. With this book, you'll become an efficient mobile developer in Xamarin.

What you'll learn:

  • Creating and customizing cross-platform UI for different platforms
  • Understanding cross-platform patterns
  • Exploring cross-platform best practices
  • Using third-party libraries to lessen your work
  • Creating bindable models and use them in XAML
  • Creating shared data access using a local SQLite database and a REST service
  • Working with your applications gesture and animation
  • Getting feedback from your user
  • Test and monitor your applications


Xamarin Essentials
Author: Mark Reynolds
Published at: 12/12/2014
ISBN: 178355083X

This is a hands-on guide that offers practical solutions to create, share, and reuse code across your iOS and Android apps. Using Xamarin platform including  Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android, this book will teach you step-by-step procedures to build and run iOS and Android apps. With this guide, you'll gain sufficient knowledge and skills to build and distribute your own mobile applications.

What you'll learn:

  • Fundamentals of Xamarin platform
  • Understanding the architecture behind Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android
  • Building Xamarin apps using Xamarin Studio and/or Visual Studio
  • Creating stunning UI for your app using Xamarin.iOS Designer
  • Debugging your Android and iOS app
  • Running your mobile app on different platforms
  • Using frameworks such as MvvmCross and Xamarin.Forms
  • Preparing your apps for distribution



Xamarin.Forms Kickstarter 2.0: Compilable Code Examples for Solving Typical Cross-platform Tasks
Author: Falko Schindler
Published at: 04/01/2016
ISBN: 1523254629

This guide gives an introduction to mobile developers who're new in Xamarin and know a little about cross-platform mobile app development. This is also helpful for advanced developers as they can use it as a handy reference. It provides 41 self containing-apps with 264 automatically extracted code snippets. With this guide, you'll be able to build and troubleshoot your Xamaring app.

What you'll learn:

  • Positioning your content
  • Going beyond Xamarin's default elements and creating your own
  • How to effectively navigate through app pages
  • Using list-view interactions
  • Adding pictures to your content
  • Using icons to create stunning user interface
  • Working with fonts and vector graphics
  • Accessing online resources with your app
  • Using animation to putting your app into motion
  • Accessing device's camera with your app
  • Linking UI and business logic through binding
  • Combining native and shared code


Xamarin Blueprints
Author: Michael Williams
Published at: 06/09/2016
ISBN: 1785887440

Xamarin Blueprints is a practical guide that will teach you to create professional-grade apps with Xamarin. It offers all the varieties of Xamarin platform including Xamarin.Forms, Xamarin Android, and Xamarin iOS. It follows a learn as you build approach providing eight full-fledged applications using Xamarin.Forms, Xamarin Android, and Xamarin iOS. If you're the kind of guy who loves to learn by building, then this is the perfect book for you. After completing this guide, you'll become a professional app developer across multiple platforms.

You'll learn to build:

  • A Gallery Application
  • A SpeechTalk Application
  • A GPS Locator Application
  • An Audio Player Application
  • A Stocklist Application
  • A Chat Application
  • A Building a File Storage Application
  • A Camera Application


Xamarin Cross-platform Application Development - Second Edition
Author: Jonathan Peppers
Published at: 27/03/2015
ISBN: 1784397881

This book is a practical guide to building real-world mobile applications with Xamarin. The book shows the basic of Xamarin with building a chat application, complete with a backend web service and native features such as GPS location, camera and push notifications. You'll also learn how to use external libraries with Xamarin and Xamarin.Forms to create shared user interfaces to make app-store-ready applications. With this book, you can transform yourself from an amateur mobile developer to a professional mobile developer.

What you'll learn:

  • Understanding Apple's MVC design pattern
  • Understanding the Android activity lifecycle
  • Designing user interfaces that can be shared across different platforms
  • Sharing C# code across platforms
  • Calling native Objective-C or Java libraries from C#
  • Working with unit testing for mobile applications
  • Creating a web service with Azure Mobile Services
  • Deploying your application on mobile devices
  • Debugging your application on mobile devices
  • Preparing your applications for distribution


Mastering Xamarin UI Development
Author: Steven F. Daniel
Published at: 20/01/2017
ISBN: 1786462001

This book is specially designed for designing the user interface in Xamarin.Forms that can be shared and used on different platforms. It'll provide you the practical skills required to develop stunning UI for Xamarin applications. You'll learn how to implement UI structures and layouts, create customized elements and write C# scripts to customize layouts. You'll be able to customize a given UI layout to suit your needs by using Data Templates. With this guide, you'll become a master UI designer in Xamarin.

What you'll learn:

  • Building native cross-platform apps using the Xamarin.Forms framework
  • Working with the different UI layouts to create customized layouts using the C# programming language
  • Customizing the user interface using DataTemplates and CustomRenderers
  • Using  the Platform Effects API to change the appearance of control elements
  • Building hybrid apps using the Razor Template Engine
  • Creating Razor Models that communicate with an SQLite database
  • Using  the MVVM pattern architecture to navigate between each of your ViewModels
  • Using location-based features within your app to display the user’s current location
  • Using data Binding to display and update information
  • Working with the Microsoft Azure Platform to incorporate API Data Access
  • Implementing third-party features within your app using the Facebook SDK and the Open Graph API
  • Performing unit testing on your Xamarin.Forms applications
  • Distributing your apps to the Google Play Store and Apple App Store


Cross-platform Localization for Native Mobile Apps with Xamarin
Author: Christopher Miller
Published at: 20/12/2016
ISBN: 1484224655
This book is intended to teach you all the aspect of Xamarin.Forms to build a multilingual mobile application that'll run on Android, iOS, and Windows platforms, and handle the localization and internationalization on each platform. With this guide, you'll learn how Xamarin platform helps you to build native apps using a single shared set of language resources using the .NET Framework. You'll understand how to tailor your apps to compete in the global market.

What you'll learn:
  • Fundamental concepts of localization and internationalization of apps
  • Working with resource files
  • Using multilingual app toolkit
  • Creating a localized, cross-platform app with Android Studio, Xcode, Xamarin, and Visual Studio tools
  • Handle cultural differences such as dates and currencies


Learning Xamarin Studio
Author: William Smith
Published at: 26/08/2014
ISBN: 1783550813

Learning Xamarin Studio is designed to teach .NET developers of any expertise to build cross-platform mobile applications without learning Java or Objective-C. It provides a full introduction to the key features and components of the Xamarin framework and shows you how effectively integrate them to build amazing mobile applications. It'll remove the worry of setting up and customizing Xamarin environment so that you can move on to producing high-quality native applications quickly. With this guide, you'll be able to create, test, and deploy apps for your business and for the app store.

What you'll learn:

  • Setting up Xamarin studio
  • Customizing the XS environment
  • Using plugins, templates, libraries, and files
  • Working with Xamarin.Forms
  • Testing and debugging your app
  • Understanding of application lifecycle
  • Working with Xcode and Android SDK
  • Deploying Mac, iOS and Android applications



Xamarin Unleashed
Author: Alec Tucker
Published at: 01/03/2018
ISBN: 0672337509

About this book

  • Xamarin Unleashed is the first comprehensive guide to using the Xamarin 3 toolset, C#, and .NET to develop native apps for iOS, Android and Windows Phone.
  • Using the best-practice MVVM pattern, you'll learn how to write C# apps which can access all the APIs and hardware facilities provided by each top mobile platform, ensuring a truly native, state-of-the-art user experience while maximizing the amount of code you can share across platforms
  • You'll discover how to make the most of Xamarin's mature and robust toolset
  • How to integrate it with the new Visual Studio 2015 to further accelerate your cross-platform development processes



Mastering Cross-Platform Development with Xamarin
Author: Can Bilgin
Published at: 31/03/2016
ISBN: 1785285688

About This Book

  • Develop your Xamarin development skills with this comprehensive guide on various patterns and features so you can create elegant and high-quality applications
  • Create adaptive user interfaces on separate platforms without compromising the user experience and platform identity
  • Implement application lifecycle management concepts to manage and finalize cross-platform projects and efficiently collaborate with other

What you'll learn:

  • Configure your environment for cross-platform projects with Xamarin
  • Gain memory management skills to avoid memory leaks and premature code cycles while decreasing the memory print of your applications
  • Employ asynchronous and parallel patterns to execute non-interactive and non-blocking processes
  • Create and use SQLite databases for offline scenarios
  • Integrate network resources with cross-platform applications
  • Design and implement eye-catching and reusable UI components without compromising nativity in mobile applications
  • Manage the application lifecycle of cross-platform development projects
  • Distribute Xamarin applications through public or private channels


Mastering Xamarin Studio
Author: Swaminathan Vetri,Safil Sunny
Published at: 06/03/2018
ISBN: 1787123871

About this book

  • Discover why Xamarin Studio is the ideal, unified development environment for cross-platform mobile development.
  • Get familiar with Xamarin Studio's unique features with a comprehensive overview of what this powerful IDE has to offer.
  • Learn to use integrated services like NuGet, source control, performance profiling and deployment tooling within the Xamarin Studio IDE.

What you'll learn:

  • Increase productivity with Xamarin Studio
  • Design iOS/Android/Mac apps
  • Build & Debug apps
  • Run automated UI tests
  • Inspect & profile apps
  • Beta/Ad-hoc distribution of apps
  • Publish apps to the App Store.
  • Creating Xamarin Studio Add-ins


Xamarin.Forms Essentials: First Steps Toward Cross-Platform Mobile Apps
Author: Gerald Versluis
Published at: 01/01/2018
ISBN: 1484232399
Xamarin.Forms Essentials provides a brief history of Xamarin as a company, including how their product has become one of the most-used, cross-platform technologies for enterprise applications and app development across the world. Examples in the book are built around a real-life example that is an actual app in Google Play and in the Apple App Store, and has thousands of downloads between iOS and Android. You will learn how an application is set up from scratch, and you will be benefited from the author's hard-won experience and tips in addressing various development challenges. 

What You'll Learn
  • Create cross-platform user interfaces from one code base for both iOS and Android
  • See how a commercial application is built and then deployed for sale in the app stores
  • Integrate your Xamarin.Forms applications with third-party, RESTful APIs
  • Arrange application architecture to avoid pitfalls and optimize your design
  • Get a heads-up on new features released as part of Xamarin.Forms 3.0
  • Choose appropriately between Xamarin.Forms and traditional Xamarin, depending upon your application needs and its goals 


Xamarin in Action: Creating native cross-platform mobile apps
Author: Jim Bennett
Published at: 30/11/2017
ISBN: 1617294381

About this book

  • Xamarin is a toolset that allows users to write native mobile apps in C# and run them on both iOS and Android devices
  • Xamarin in Action teaches readers how to build Xamarin apps on iOS and Android from scratch while maximizing code reuse.
  • By the end, readers will be able to build a high-quality production-ready Xamarin app on iOS and Android from scratch with a high level of code reuse
  • Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications



Xamarin Continuous Integration and Delivery: Team Services, Test Cloud, and HockeyApp
Author: Gerald Versluis
Published at: 09/05/2017
ISBN: 1484227158

About this book

  • Teaches the necessity of an automated development pipeline
  • Helps you set up an automated pipeline for Xamarin development
  • Integrates testing (on physical devices!) to ensure high-quality apps

What You'll Learn

  • Why you want an automated development pipeline
  • Obtain and configure the automated tooling
  • Continuously integrate your apps
  • Run automated unit tests
  • Push updates to your customers
  • Monitor and detect errors without user intervention


Top 10 Xamarin Tips and Traps
Author: Charles Pluta
Published at: 24/03/2017
ISBN: B06XVGNMQL

Whether you are new to creating mobile apps, or an experienced developer, the resources and examples will help you to work faster, as well as save you time.

What you'll learn:
• Accessing existing Xamarin resources 
• Explaining the Xamarin GitHub 
• Using versioning with Xamarin 
• Integrating NuGet packages with your app 
• Using Material Design for Android apps 
• Increasing app performance with XAML compilation 
• Rendering data natively with ListView and templates 
• Using emulators to test apps 



SQLite Database Programming for Xamarin: Cross-platform C# database development for iOS and Android using SQLite.XM
Author: Anthony Serpico
Published at: 13/11/2015
ISBN: B017ZFR5GE
About this book
  • SQLite.XM is a freely available SQLite wrapper written in C# and designed to be used with apps developed using Xamarin
  • SQLite Database Programming for Xamarin will show you how to leverage the power of SQLite.XM to both accelerate and simplify database programming for your mobile applications
  •  It shields your application from the details of working directly with SQLite
  • Your app interfaces with a high level, the cross-platform layer that provides database CRUD functionality
What you'll learn:
  • In Part 1 of this book, the author spends some time talking in general terms about data persistence along with issues specific to mobile app development
  • The various technologies used in the book to build a data persistence layer
  • Database design and challenges specific to designing for mobile apps
  • Part 2 is dedicated to explaining how to use SQLite.XM for data persistence on the device
  • Part 3 explains SQLite.XM and cloud replication
  • How to set up a server-side database and how to get data moved, or copied, from the device to your cloud server


Creating Mobile Apps with Xamarin.Forms
Author: Charles Petzold
Published at: 01/01/2016
ISBN: 1509302980

About this book

  • This third edition ebook, now with 16 chapters, is about writing applications for Xamarin.Forms, the new mobile development platform for iOS, Android, and Windows phones unveiled by Xamarin in May 2014.
  • Xamarin.Forms lets you write shared user-interface code in C# and XAML that maps to native controls on these three platforms.
  • This book is for C# programmers who want to write applications using a single code base that targets the three most popular mobile platforms: iOS, Android, and Windows encompassing the Universal Windows Platform and Windows Phone
  • This book assumes that you know C# and are familiar with the use of the .NET Framework
  • However, when Charles discusses some C# and .NET features that might be somewhat exotic or unfamiliar to recent C# programmers, he adopts a somewhat slower pace


Also you can check these books:
  • Xamarin.Forms Essentials: First Steps Toward Cross-Platform Mobile Apps
  • Xamarin Continuous Integration and Delivery: Team Services, Test Cloud, and HockeyApp
  • Mastering Xamarin UI Development
  • Mastering Xamarin.Forms - Second Edition:
  • Creating Mobile Apps with Xamarin Forms Preview Edition 2
  • Mastering Xamarin Forms - Second Edition:
  • Mastering Xamarin Forms - Second Edition
  • Xamarin Blueprints
  • Xamarin Mobile Application Development: Cross-Platform C# and Xamarin.Forms Fundamentals
  • Xamarin Cross-platform Application Development - Second Edition
  • Mastering Xamarin.Forms - Second Edition
  • Building Xamarin.Forms Mobile Apps Using XAML: Mobile Cross-Platform XAML and Xamarin.Forms Fundamentals
  • Mastering Xamarin.Forms: App architecture techniques for building multi-platform, native mobile apps with Xamarin.Forms 4, 3rd Edition

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