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Carefully follow these steps to successfully set up your PC and Xbox One for Universal Windows Platform (UWP) development. After you’ve got things set up, you can learn more about Developer Mode on Xbox One and building UWP apps on the UWP for Xbox One page.

Before you start

Before you start you will need to do the following:

• Set up a PC with the latest version of Windows 10.

• Have at least five gigabytes of free space on your Xbox One console.

Setting up your development PC

1. Install Visual Studio 2015 Update 3, Visual Studio 2017, or Visual Studio 2019.

   If you're installing Visual Studio 2015 Update 3, make sure that you choose Custom install and select the Universal Windows App Development Tools check box – it's not part of the default install. If you are a C++ developer, make sure that you choose Custom install and select C++.

   If you're installing Visual Studio 2017 or Visual Studio 2019, make sure that you choose the Universal Windows Platform development workload. If you're a C++ developer, in the Summary pane on the right, under Universal Windows Platform development, make sure that you select the C++ Universal Windows Platform tools checkbox. It's not part of the default install.

   For more information, see Set up your UWP on Xbox development environment.

2. Install the latest Windows 10 SDK.

3. Enable Developer Mode for your development PC (Settings / Update & Security / For developers / Use developer features / Developer mode).

Now that your development PC is ready, you can watch this video or continue reading to see how to set up your Xbox One for development and create and deploy a UWP app to it.

Setting up your Xbox One console

1. Activate Developer Mode on your Xbox One. Download the app, get the activation code, and then enter it into the Manage Xbox One consoles page in your Partner Center app developer account. For more information, see Xbox One Developer Mode activation.

2. Open the Dev Mode Activation app and select Switch and restart. Congratulations, you now have an Xbox One in Developer Mode!

Note

Your retail games and apps won’t run in Developer Mode, but the apps or games you create will. Switch back to Retail Mode to run your favorite games and apps.

Note

Before you can deploy an app to your Xbox One in Developer Mode, you must have a user signed in on the console. You can either use your existing Xbox Live account or create a new account for your console in Developer Mode.

Creating your first project in Visual Studio

For more detailed information, see Set up your UWP on Xbox development environment.

1. For C#: Create a new Universal Windows project, and in the Solution Explorer, right-click the project and select Properties. Select the Debug tab, change Target device to Remote Machine, type the IP address or hostname of your Xbox One console into the Remote machine field, and select Universal (Unencrypted Protocol) in the Authentication Mode drop-down list.

   You can find your Xbox One IP address by starting Dev Home on your console (the big tile on the right side of Home) and looking at the top left corner. For more information about Dev Home, see Introduction to Xbox One tools.

2. For C++ and HTML/Javascript projects: You follow a path similar to C# projects, but in the project properties go to the Debugging tab, select Remote Machine in the Debugger to open the drop-down list, type the IP address or hostname of the console into the Machine Name field, and select Universal (Unencrypted Protocol) in the Authentication Type field.

3. Select x64 from the dropdown to the left of the green play button in the top menu bar.

4. When you press F5, your app will build and start to deploy on your Xbox One.

5. The first time you do this, Visual Studio will prompt you for a PIN for your Xbox One. You can get a PIN by starting Dev Home on your Xbox One and selecting the Show Visual Studio pin button.

6. After you have paired, your app will start to deploy. The first time you do this it might be a bit slow (we have to copy all the tools over to your Xbox), but if it takes more than a few minutes, something is probably wrong. Make sure that you have followed all of the steps above (particularly, did you set the Authentication Mode to Universal?) and that you are using a wired network connection to your Xbox One.

7. Sit back and relax. Enjoy your first app running on the console!

That's it!

See also

Have a lot of movies or TV episodes stored in your computer and want to watch them on your big screen TV? Here are the steps on how to easily stream those videos from your Mac to the Xbox One using this handy app from the Mac App Store called SofaPlay ($4.99 - Download now. It's so easy and convenient, that I want to slap myself for not knowing about it earlier.

1. On your Mac, go download and install SofaPlay from the Mac App Store.
2. Open Xbox Video on the Xbox One. If you do not have it yet, go to your Xbox home screen and scroll all the way to the right until you see the search tile. Look for Xbox Video, and then install it.
3. Open SofaPlay on your Mac and select the Xbox-SystemOS option from the dropdown list.
4. Drag a movie file into SofaPlay.
5. That's it! The movie should start playing on your Xbox One.

I was surprised at how easy it was to set up. Previously, I copied my videos into a USB stick and then attach it to my TV. With this setup, I can just drag and drop the videos from my Mac, and then immediately watch it on TV.

Best homebrew apps mac. There are a couple of issues worth mentioning. SofaPlay is unable to play videos I have in .mov format. It did not have problems with .mp4 videos, though.

Another issue is that I cannot drag the playhead or have forward and reverse buttons on the SofaPlay player to skim through videos. It's not a major issue though, since you can use your Xbox One controller, SmartGlass on mobile devices, or the Xbox One Media Remote. Other than that, I love that I can now easily stream my movies to the Xbox One.

SofaPlay for Mac is $4.99 at the App Store. There is a free lite version available, but it is limited to just two minutes of video streaming.

Are you a Mac user and use SofaPlay? Do you stream videos to the Xbox One in any other way? Let us know in the comments!

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