Lesson 2: Installing Visual Studio 2026

🚀 Getting Started

Installing Visual Studio 2026

Step-by-step setup on Windows & macOS, MAUI workload, Android SDK.

System Requirements

Windows: Windows 11 64-bit, 8 GB RAM (16 GB recommended), 50 GB free disk
macOS: macOS 13 Ventura or later, Apple Silicon or Intel, 16 GB RAM recommended

⚠️

Android emulators require hardware virtualization. On Windows, enable Hyper-V or HAXM in BIOS. On Apple Silicon, virtualization is automatic.

Installation Steps

Download the Visual Studio 2026 installer from visualstudio.microsoft.com and run it.
On the Workloads screen, select .NET Multi-platform App UI development. This installs MAUI, the Android SDK, and emulator tooling.
Under Individual Components, confirm Android SDK (API 34+) and Android Emulator are checked.
Click Install and allow 15–30 minutes for the download and setup.
After setup, open Visual Studio 2026 and go to Tools → Android → Android SDK Manager to verify installed packages.

Verifying the Installation

bash

# Check ADB is working
adb --version
# Expected: Android Debug Bridge version 1.0.41+

# List installed SDK packages
sdkmanager --list | grep "build-tools"

Environment Variables

bash

# Windows — add to System Environment Variables
ANDROID_HOME=C:\Users\YOU\AppData\Local\Android\Sdk
PATH=%PATH%;%ANDROID_HOME%\tools;%ANDROID_HOME%\platform-tools

# macOS/Linux — add to ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc
export ANDROID_HOME="$HOME/Library/Android/sdk"
export PATH="$PATH:$ANDROID_HOME/tools:$ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools"

Key Takeaways

Select the .NET MAUI workload during VS 2026 installation

Android SDK Manager is under Tools → Android

Set ANDROID_HOME and PATH for CLI tool access

Hardware virtualization is required for emulator performance