Android Ad-Hoc app publication guide (with Xamarin Studio)

By



Warning before to start
Before to install a custom APK app on your device, make sure it comes from a secured and trusted source !


Generate your APK using Xamarin Studio

In order to have a valid package file (APK file), we have to generate a valid package signed with a security certificate. You can use a temporary certificate for test purpose. The process bellow shows you how to do that using Xamarin Studio Wizard:

Generate your APK

Select Archive for publishing menu

Then select "Ad-Hoc" option (to generate your APK localy)


Click on "Sign and distribute"



Create a custom signing certificate

Create a temporary certificate to sign your APK file













Install the APK on the target device

Configure the target device

In order to accept and install a "custom" APK (application coming from other sources than the Play Store), you will need to unlock your phone. This is done in the phone's parameters:


 -    

Activate: Security / "Unknown sources" menu




Step 2: Copy your APK to your device

You can copy the APK file directly to the device or you can use a service like Google Drive to share it. However once you've got your APK click it and then install it:

    




Install the app from your device's folder

        




References:

Preparing an application for release:
Xamarin guide - preparing_an_application_for_release
Location: Paris, France

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

EMGU with Xamarin Forms guide [part 1]

By
Image
I- Introduction, OpenCV and EMGU Do you know OpenCV ( Open Source Computer Vision Library:  https://opencv.org/ ) ?  This open source library let's you work and play with images and videos with a lot of powerful image processing algorithms !  If you want some details, I suggest you to first navigate to the link above or search for 'OpenCV' on Google.  Examples of OpenCV processing found on the web (filters, object detection, edges...): EMGU is a .NET OpenCV wrapper. That means that you will be able to use OpenCV functionnalities in your .NET projects using C# for instance. EMGU is cross platform, so you will also be able to use it in your Xamarin projects ! That's great because there is no advanced image processing library in Xamarin. In this article, we will talk about EMGU and list the steps to setup a Xamarin Forms project using EMGU . It may help you because, we must say that it's not a trivial task...  II-What do I need to
Read more »

[Xamarin Forms] Custom bottom bordered entry (iOS & Android)

By
Image
Custom entry with renderers For my Xamarin Forms project I needed to render an 'Entry' control with a bottom border of a specific color. There are several possibilities but I will show you mine. For that, I used renderers. iOS one is particularly not trivial. The wished result look like that: iOS Renderer [assembly: ExportRenderer(typeof(ExtDatePicker), typeof(ExtDatePickerRenderer))] namespace MyCompany.iOS.Renderers { public class ExtDatePickerRenderer : DatePickerRenderer { protected override void OnElementChanged(ElementChangedEventArgs<DatePicker> e) { base.OnElementChanged(e); // Need to connect to Sizechanged event because first render time, Entry has no size (-1). if (e.NewElement != null) e.NewElement.SizeChanged += (obj, args) => { var xamEl = obj as DatePicker; if (xamEl == null) ret
Read more »

Xamarin.Forms device unique ID...

By
As in a lot of applications, you will probably need to get a unique identifier to identify a unique user . And it becomes a little more complicated when you have to deal with different platforms like Android, iOS and Windows Phone... Here is a simple solution that you can implement in Xamarin Forms that I found on this blog: http://codeworks.it/blog/?p=260 First define a service that you will use in your Xamarin Forms Application: // Your service interface definition public interface IDevice { string GetIdentifier(); } // How you get your service in your app IDevice device = DependencyService.Get (); string deviceIdentifier = device.GetIdentifier(); And here are the implementations for Android / Windows Phone and the most complicated, iOS platform: // WINDOWS PHONE [assembly: Xamarin.Forms.Dependency(typeof(WinPhoneDevice))] namespace XFUniqueIdentifier.WinPhone { public class WinPhoneDevice : IDevice { public string GetIdentifier() { byte[] myDeviceId = (
Read more »