Microsoft has released .NET 11 Preview 6 with several architectural and reliability improvements for .NET MAUI. The update brings the next-generation CollectionView implementation to Windows, moves Android Shell toward the handler model, improves Native AOT compatibility, and adds recovery support for interrupted media-picker operations.

The .NET 11 development cycle has focused partly on replacing older Xamarin.Forms-era infrastructure with platform handlers and source-generated code. Earlier previews made the XAML source generator the default and continued work on trimming and CoreCLR support. Preview 6 extends that modernisation while removing one of the remaining migration packages intended for Xamarin.Forms applications.

The largest UI change is the arrival of CollectionView2, also referred to as CV2, on Windows. The new Windows handler uses WinUI’s ItemsRepeater, bringing it in line with the CV2 implementations already available on Android, iOS, and Mac Catalyst. It maps MAUI linear and grid layouts to virtualising WinUI layouts and supports features including grouping, selection, headers and footers, empty views, snapping, incremental loading, and integration with RefreshView.

Preview 6 also reimplements Shell on Android using standard MAUI handlers. The new ShellHandler, ShellItemHandler, and ShellSectionHandler replace renderer-based classes and reuse components shared with FlyoutViewHandler and TabbedPage. Microsoft describes this as an Android-only change for now; iOS and Mac Catalyst continue to use their existing Shell renderers. Applications with custom Shell behaviour or renderer-level dependencies should therefore test the preview carefully.

For hybrid applications, HybridWebView JavaScript interop now uses a source generator instead of reflection. This removes trimming and AOT warnings and allows the control to work in fully trimmed and Native AOT applications. On Android, MAUI also filters incoming JavaScript messages by source, preventing unrelated window.postMessage events, such as messages sent from nested frames, from being reported as native messages.

The release adds a MinimumDistance property to GeolocationListeningRequest, allowing applications to request location notifications only after the device has moved a specified number of meters. Android applications also gain opt-in MediaPicker result recovery. New APIs can retrieve, wait for, or clear media results when Android terminates and recreates an application process while the system camera or picker remains open.

One potentially breaking change is the removal of the Microsoft.Maui.Controls.Compatibility NuGet package. Projects that explicitly reference it, or depend on its Xamarin.Forms compatibility renderers, must migrate before targeting .NET 11. Regular applications that reference only Microsoft.Maui.Controls are not affected, because several compatibility-named base types remain in the core assembly.

Preview 6 also includes fixes across CollectionView, Shell, Android Material 3 styling, iOS 26, XAML generation, accessibility, and some platform essentials. Apple workloads now target stable Xcode 26.6, while .NET for Android aligns HTTP failure and cancellation behaviour more in line with the broader HttpClient contract. Developers can find installation instructions in Microsoft’s Preview 6 announcement and detailed MAUI changes, linked issues, and platform notes in the official GitHub release notes. The .NET 11 Preview 6 is available for download as a preview runtime and tools package.