So, it's been some time since the preview release of Xamarin Player, and it doesn't really seem like there's any real momentum behind it right now.
The numerous issues that people have, missing libraries, missing permissions, missing resources and assets.
These are the same issues that have plagued the XAML Previewer for over a year now as well.
I had high hopes that you were able to work out some amazing solutions to these tough problems, but it sure seems like you have not, which is understandable.
So here is the solution:
Let us embed the live player stuff inside our app.
I think Gorilla player has something like this supported.
The idea is obvious and simple - when we make larger changes like including new assets or linking new libraries - we can't recompile the app and deploy to device.
But then all of the smaller XAML, codebehind and viewmodel changes should be able to live update on the device with no issues.
The benefits of this approach are numerous, while the only drawback I can think of is having to do some more work to turn the whole player into a Nuget and implement some sort of interface for our app to initialize/run the player stuff.
I've dabbled with ReactNative, and their approach is also like this. When you develop an app, you compile your native projects, and you also get their "player" like interface compiled in, which connects to your development PC and reloads your UI and Business code as needed.
Once you make changes to native projects or add native assets, you recompile the app and keep going.
Please let me know your thoughts.