Design view for xamarin not available in visual studio 2019

Question

I just re-installed windows, got visual studio back on it, cloned it from my github repo. And all of a sudden I can't see my preview design screen anymore. Tried a bunch of things already.

I got the lates jdk, got the latest xamarin nuget packages. Restarted VS, rebuild/ clean solution Got into my tools > options > xamarin, did see the option for splitview, but no matter what. it didnt bring it. I can't even see the 3 buttons for preview, split vertical and split horizontal.

Screenshot of visual studio window where the buttons are missing

if anyone knows the solutions i would be very happy to know, makes the desigining way easier instead of always building the project to see the change, even with hot reload on

Answer 1

After set the settings in Tools > Options > Xamarin > Xamarin.Forms XAML Previewer dialog, you need to restart the Visual Studio.

If it still does not work when you create a new project, you could right click the content page, select the View Designer. It was able to open the previewer.

Updated:

The XAML Previewer has been deprecated in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.8 and Visual Studio for Mac version 8.8, and replaced by the XAML Hot Reload feature in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.9 and Visual Studio for Mac version 8.9.

For now, I use the Hot Reload insead and provide a live visual tree to receive a real-time view of your running XAML code. It shows a tree view of the UI elements of your running Xamarin.Forms application.

When you debug you project, by default, it appears on the IDE's left. If you don't see it, use Debug > Windows > Live Visual Tree to show it.