[2][3][4] In 1996, FYI Software, founded by Geoff Perlman, bought CrossBasic,[5][6][7] which had been marketed by its author Andrew Barry[8] as a shareware product.

[15] In 2004, REAL software announced the "Made with REALbasic Showcase" program to highlight applications created with the product.

[21] Also on this date they released Xojo 2013 Release 1 which included an all-new user interface, full support for Cocoa on OS X, improved support for web applications, all new documentation and a new Introduction to Programming Using Xojo textbook[22] that was designed for beginners to learn the fundamentals of object oriented programming.

[28] [29] Xojo added many new features in 2018 and 2019, including support for macOS and iOS light/dark modes,[30][31][32] a GraphicsPath for drawing Bézier curves, and a new DateTime class.

In 2020, Xojo introduced a new web framework,[33] which is a ground-up re-write that adds modern-looking new controls, support for Bootstrap themes, two layout modes and more.

Xojo has ranked[35] among the top 100 most popular programming languages as published by TIOBE,[36] a company which rates the quality of software.

Unlike most programming environments, project source code is not stored in plain text files by default, but in a proprietary, single-file format.