Where in Visual Studio 2017 can I find “Blank App (Xamarin.Forms Portable)”?

Question

I'm using Visual Studio 2017 for personal Apps (Windows Form), now I'm trying to use it for Xamarin Apps, but I can not find "Blank App ( Xamarin.Forms Portable )" under Visual C# in the New Project creating Windows.

Do I miss any special update or something?

Answer 1

You mention Portable in your title but Portable Class Libraries (PCLs) have been deprecated in favor of .Net Standard. The current VS 2017 no longer supports creating them. If you're new and don't really know the difference between PCL and .Net Standard the chances are pretty good you can just go with .Net Standard and won't have to worry about it. The end result is basically the same. Whatever documentation/tutorial you're using will probably still be applicable even if you're doing a .Net Standard project instead of a PCL.

Along with the other answer that says to make sure you have Xamarin components installed, proceed with the stuff below.

As far as selecting "Blank App" specifically, it's in the second part of the workflow to create the project. I'll show you step 1 and step 2 on my installation.

Answer 2

Ensure this is installed in Visual Studio Installer (run VSI, find your installation and if it's trying to update it, drop down the arrow next to update and choose Modify):