.NET MAUI officially targets iOS, Android, macOS (via Mac Catalyst), and Windows. That’s the list. Apple TV? Not on it. Native macOS AppKit? Nope — you get Mac Catalyst, which is really an iPad app wearing a trench coat.

The GoneDotNet/mauiplatforms project changes that. It provides custom .NET MAUI backends for Apple TV (tvOS via UIKit) and macOS (native AppKit) — two platforms that Microsoft has no plans to support.

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See It Running

Before diving into the technical details, see for yourself. These are the sample apps running on each platform:

Apple TV (tvOS Simulator)

macOS (Native AppKit)

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How It Works

Both backends use the platform-agnostic MAUI NuGet packages — the net10.0 fallback assemblies that ship with MAUI. Since tvOS and macOS (AppKit) aren’t recognized TFMs by MAUI, NuGet resolves to these fallback assemblies where ToPlatform() returns object and layout methods are no-ops.

The project provides custom handler implementations that bridge MAUI’s layout and rendering system to the native platform UI frameworks:

• tvOS — maps MAUI controls to UIKit views (UILabel, UIButton, UIScrollView, etc.)
• macOS — maps MAUI controls to AppKit views (NSTextField, NSButton, NSScrollView, etc.)

Custom base handlers (TvOSViewHandler / MacOSViewHandler) override the no-op PlatformArrange and GetDesiredSize to bridge MAUI’s layout system to native view frames. On macOS, all container views override IsFlipped => true because NSView uses bottom-left origin by default, while MAUI expects top-left coordinates.

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What’s Implemented

The handler coverage is impressive for a community project. Both platforms share a common set of control handlers:

Control	tvOS (UIKit)	macOS (AppKit)
Label	UILabel	NSTextField
Button	UIButton	NSButton
Entry	UITextField	NSTextField
Editor	❌	NSTextView
Picker	UIButton + UIAlertController	NSPopUpButton
Slider	Custom TvOSSliderView	NSSlider
Switch	UIButton (toggle)	NSSwitch
CheckBox	❌	NSButton (checkbox)
ActivityIndicator	UIActivityIndicatorView	NSProgressIndicator
ProgressBar	UIProgressView	NSProgressIndicator
Image	UIImageView	NSImageView
ScrollView	UIScrollView	NSScrollView
CollectionView	UIScrollView	NSScrollView
CarouselView	UIScrollView (paging)	❌
NavigationPage	✅ Stack navigation	✅ Stack navigation
TabbedPage	Custom tab bar	NSSegmentedControl
WebView	❌	WKWebView
BlazorWebView	❌	✅ Custom implementation
DatePicker / TimePicker	❌	NSDatePicker
Border / Shadow / ShapeView	✅ CAShapeLayer	✅ CAShapeLayer

That’s a lot of controls. And there’s Essentials support too — AppInfo, DeviceInfo, Connectivity, Battery (macOS), DeviceDisplay, FileSystem, Preferences, SecureStorage, FilePicker (macOS), MediaPicker (macOS), and TextToSpeech all have platform-specific implementations.

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BlazorWebView on macOS

One of the standout features is a working BlazorWebView on native macOS AppKit. The built-in MAUI BlazorWebView internally casts its handler to the iOS/Catalyst BlazorWebViewHandler, which obviously fails on AppKit.

The project works around this with a custom MacOSBlazorWebView control backed by WKWebView, a custom app:// URL scheme handler, and a bridge between MAUI’s IDispatcher and Blazor’s abstract Dispatcher. It even serves static content from the macOS app bundle’s Resources directory.

var blazorView = new MacOSBlazorWebView
{
    HostPage = "wwwroot/index.html",
    HeightRequest = 400
};
blazorView.RootComponents.Add(new BlazorRootComponent
{
    Selector = "#app",
    ComponentType = typeof(MyApp.Components.Counter)
});

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Building & Running

Everything is CLI-only — JetBrains Rider and Visual Studio won’t compile these projects because the net10.0-tvos and net10.0-macos TFMs aren’t recognized by IDE build systems. You’ll need the .NET 10 SDK with the tvOS and macOS workloads installed:

dotnet workload install tvos macos

# Build & run the tvOS sample (launches in simulator)
dotnet build samples/SampleTv/SampleTv.csproj -t:Run

# Build & run the macOS sample
dotnet build samples/SampleMac/SampleMac.csproj
open samples/SampleMac/bin/Debug/net10.0-macos/osx-arm64/MAUI\ macOS.app

Sample apps use pure C# pages (no XAML) to avoid XAML compilation issues on unsupported platforms.

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Why This Matters

This project is a proof of concept that demonstrates MAUI’s architecture is flexible enough to target platforms beyond Microsoft’s official support matrix. The platform-agnostic fallback assemblies that ship with MAUI NuGet packages — originally there for compatibility — become the foundation for entirely new platform backends.

It also opens up interesting possibilities:

• Apple TV apps built with .NET and MAUI’s familiar API surface
• Native macOS apps without the compromises of Mac Catalyst
• A template for bringing MAUI to other platforms in the future

Check out the full project at github.com/GoneDotNet/mauiplatforms.

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