I’m quite new to Xamarin Forms; I’ve managed to get projects working before now, but I find myself stumbling through the same problems again and again. This is one such issue - so, hopefully, now I will come across my own article first!

The Problem

You create a new Xamarin Forms app, press F5 and you get an error similar to this:

Xamarin.Android for Visual Studio requires Android SDK. Please click here to configure.

If you double click this, it should launch the Android SDK Manager.

The Solution

The problem is, in fact, that there are many Android SDKs; so you need to install the correct ones for the systems that you’re targeting. Start with the SDK Manager; if it hasn’t already launched, then launch that here:

Next, have a look in your Xamarin output (that’s the standard output window, just select output from Xamarin in the drop-down):

Okay, so now you know what’s missing. We should now be able to find those versions of the Build Tools in the SDK Manager:

Once you’ve made the changes, select “Apply Changes” at the bottom.

It would be nice if that was it; however, you may have to restart Visual Studio before it realises what you’ve done.