macOS and Linux – Preemptive Support Center

While .NET originated as a Windows-centric programming framework, it has expanded into other operating systems through community projects like Mono and official support in .NET Core. This page details Dotfuscator's support for the macOS and Linux families of operating systems.

Dotfuscator can protect .NET-based apps that run on macOS and Linux. This includes apps that target .NET Core and .NET 5. Mono apps - for the traditional "desktop" Mono as well as the versions used in Xamarin.Android, Xamarin.iOS, and MAUI Android - are also supported, but you should configure Dotfuscator to use only Mono-compatible transforms.

You can also install Dotfuscator itself onto macOS and Linux machines using the NuGet package. The following Dotfuscator components are supported on these operating systems:

The MSBuild targets and tasks can be used in any MSBuild-based system that supports .NET Standard 2.0. For examples, see the NuGet package's MSBuild system requirements.
The command line interface can be run using .NET 6 or later.

Warning: The Config Editor is not supported; it is exclusive to Windows. You can still edit Dotfuscator config files with a text editor on macOS and Linux; see the Config File reference for details.

When running on macOS and Linux, Dotfuscator cannot use the Windows-exclusive .NET Framework SDK. Thus some features are limited; see Features Requiring .NET Framework SDK for details.

When attempting to build Dotfuscator on Ubuntu 22, you can encounter a specific System.attributeTargets.System.Runtime error. For more details on this error and how to fix it, see our Troubleshooting page under the 'System.attributeTargets.System.Runtime error' section.

To install Dotfuscator on macOS or Linux, see the instructions for installing the NuGet package.