Permissions made easy with Xamarin.Essentials

If you need to use features like geolocation, contacts, or the camera we have to ask permission from the user.

Implementing permission in Xamarin forms was not as straight forward as we had to use native components. To the rescue came Xamarin.Essentials 1.5. It makes it easy to implement permissions like geolocation, contacts, or the camera.

Let's look at an example.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<ContentPage
    x:Class="PermissionEssentiial.MainPage"
    xmlns="http://xamarin.com/schemas/2014/forms"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2009/xaml">
    <StackLayout
        Padding="30"
        Spacing="30"
        VerticalOptions="CenterAndExpand">
            <Label
            FontAttributes="Bold"
            FontSize="Large"
            HorizontalTextAlignment="Center"
            Text="Location permission needed"
            TextColor="Black" />
            <Button
            Margin="10,0"
            BackgroundColor="#EE7E4C"
            Command="{Binding PermissionCommand}"
            CornerRadius="20"
            FontSize="20"
            Text="Give permission"
            TextColor="Black" />
    </StackLayout>
</ContentPage>

In the ViewModel

public class MainPageViewModel
    {
        public ICommand PermissionCommand { get; set; }
        public MainPageViewModel()
        {
            PermissionCommand = new 
            Command(async () => await    RequestPermissionAsync());
        }
async Task RequestPermissionAsync()
        {
            var status = await  Permissions.CheckStatusAsync<Permissions.LocationWhenInUse>();
            if (status != PermissionStatus.Granted)
            {
                status = await Permissions.RequestAsync<Permissions.LocationWhenInUse>();
            }
        }
    }

This is the output you get

Note: You need to add permissions in the manifest file of android and the Info.plist file of iOS.