Right way to get Xamarin Forms Previewer working in Visual Studio?

Question

I'm still getting the gray box with XFPageRendererView text slugged in whenever I try and use the Xamarin Forms Previewer.

I'm on the latest stable build of Xamarin and using latest updated Visual Studio 2015 Enterprise.

When I check Xamarin bug report there's an old bug about this from last year marked as closed but it's still "open" for me.

Hoping it goes without saying that I know I don't "need" the previewer. But for basic layout and sanity check it would be so much quicker.

Thanks.

Answer 1

keep up to date JDK version

Check out JDK current version. Tools -> Options -> Xamarin -> Java Development Kit

Install or Update the JDK

Restart Vs studio 2017

Answer 2

After February 20 someday Xamarin's update fixed the problem. Make sure you installed Java SDK 64 bit. Also before opening the XAML file, please build/rebuild the solution couple of times. And try to open/reopen the file couple of times. For details you can check my blog here.

Answer 3

Last week this was also my problem. i searched the solution in xamarin forums and they said that if you install a mac agent, forms previewer will work. I dont have a mac so never tried it. the solution that worked for me was to install the latest BETA version of xamarin. See image on how to install BETA