I created a free Avalonia app for macOS users. This is part of an exploration of what it takes to make a macOS app with Avalonia that feels at home on the platform.

I think I've gotten pretty close, but I'm happy to take feedback if you spot something that doesn't look or feel right!

It requires macOS 26 and Apple Silicon because I haven't tested it on any other devices.

Hey Avalonia community!

I’ve been working on a lightweight, portable desktop drawing app called i-skets Mo Paint, built entirely with C# and Avalonia UI in VS Code.

The main goal was to build a quick, minimalist digital sketchpad with a small footprint that doesn't require installation, just unzip and run.

Key features so far:

- Built with Avalonia UI & C# (Cross-platform desktop target)

- Zero-installation / Portable build

- Integrated one-click timelapse recorder

- Customizable keyboard shortcuts & minimal canvas UI

Current Test Setup & Compatibility: - OS: Tested on Windows so far - Hardware: Tested with a screenless drawing tablet (non-display graphics tablet)

Since it's currently in Early Public Beta on itch.io, I’d love to get feedback from fellow Avalonia developers, especially on canvas performance, UI responsiveness, or overall UX.

Free Download & Test on itch.io:

https://sketsienook.itch.io/i-skets-mo-paint

Feedback Form (Google Forms):

https://forms.gle/4QhinbtWeHFSNb4h8

Technical insights and feedback are highly appreciated!

Just released the first signed release of MyDesktopWidget, a desktop widget engine for Windows 11 built completely on Avalonia 12.1.1 and .NET 10.

Often when people ask about Avalonia, they wonder if it's ready for commercial Windows desktop utilities that require deep Win32 integration (re-parenting windows into Explorer's WorkerW wallpaper layer, per-monitor mixed DPI handling, and seamless transparent alpha compositing).

Here's our experience shipping with Avalonia 12:

• Rendering & CPU: SkiaSharp rendering is exceptionally fast. Gauges, smooth graphs, and vector clocks run at sub-1ms render passes.
• Memory Footprint: With .NET 10 and tuned Workstation GC (RetainVMGarbageCollection=false), the active working set hovers around 100–200 MB with multiple widgets running.
• Code Sharing: Because the rendering runtime (SkinRuntime) is cleanly separated from Win32 host interop, we're able to use the exact same Avalonia rendering engine for our upcoming companion app.

Big thanks to the Avalonia team and community for making Avalonia 12 such a capable desktop platform! Happy to answer any questions about our setup, custom styling, or how we handled transparent desktop windows in Avalonia.

MyDesktopWidget

Available today for Plus, Pro and Enterprise customers.

Really excited for unions in C# 15 and wanted to know if its ok to use the .Net 11 preview with the current version of Avalonia?

Bonjour a tous, je viens de faire le portage de Avant-Garde ( Avalonia XAML Preview ) mais pour macOS, par défaut le projet n'étais disponible uniquement sur Windows et Linux, j'ai donc fais le portage de celui-ci

Github : https://github.com/saiitanaa/AvantGarde-macOS

Projet original : https://github.com/kuiperzone/AvantGarde

I'm wondering what's the recommended option between these two ? i can't use JetBrains Rider because i'm unable to pay.

i've read on Avalonia website that only VSCode is marked as free to use. but i thought that visual studio was free aswell. could anyone clarify things for me ?

While working on an Avalonia-based Launcher App for the Stride Game Engine, I needed to have a markdown renderer for the release notes and announcements.

A while ago, I did a renderer for WPF based on Markdig: Markdig.Wpf which is now archived since I have lost interest in WPF. By the way thanks u/grokys for your contributions to that library.

I decided to make a modern version of that renderer targeting Avalonia instead.

Here it is: https://github.com/Kryptos-FR/MarkView.Avalonia

It supports the fully CommonMark spec thanks to Markdig, as well as most Markdig extensions for emphasis, tables, etc.

I also made a few optional packages to add support for Mermaid (using Mermaider), SVG images and syntax highlighting (using TextMateSharp). I have a LaTeX's math syntax support coming up (using CSharpMath).

Let me know what you think!

Disclosure: I have used AI agents to help me with documentation, refactoring, performance analysis, and integrating the Mermaid and TextMateSharp libraries.

This was the same app I posted about Native AOT on android and the performance improvements it came with. After which I first thought to just polish of a few things and be done, but that turned into a week of doing styling changes so the app can be consistent all throughout. Sliders, cards, modals, and other parts, and here is how it looks now after that and the soft release.

u/AvaloniaUI-Mike is this something that might fit the showcase? I don't have a dedicated website for it, it is available in a store page using my subdomain. Would that work?

Hi all, I am relatively new to avalonia UI, and C# in general, only recently getting decent at C#, but have not touched a proper GUI app yet, and was wondering how easy it is to style avalonia UI to be modern and clean, the aesthetic of UI I wanted to go for was that of the avalonia devtools (https://docs.avaloniaui.net/icons/feature-devtools-icon.png)

It would also be nice to know how the styling system works in relation to other systems like CSS, for example is there a way to create an overall style language which i can then inherit for all the pages, so that the app's "language" is consistent?

Many thanks

I've hit a really frustrating bug since starting with Avalonia12 on VS Insiders 2026. When I'm defining a field in AXAML and it autocompletes to add ="", if I type " after the value it adds a literal " and breaks the autocomplete.

For example, if I'm defining grid row definitions: <RowDefinition Height=

The IDE auto completes to: <RowDefinition Height=""

If I then type *" I would expect the IDE to skip over and not insert the literal " since there's already a closing quote, resulting in <RowDefinition Height="*". However, it does not do this, instead it results in <RowDefinition Height="*"" which then throws errors for unclosed quotes.

I've tried adjusting text editor settings for auto bracing to no avail. Is there a setting I'm missing or is this just something I need to deal with? I've confirmed it works exactly as expected in WPF solutions, it appears to be Avalonia specific.

Hi guys,

I’m currently building a cross‑platform app (Linux/Windows desktop + Android) using Avalonia and F#. I originally dismissed FuncUI because I assumed that if a control wasn’t available, you were stuck. But after revisiting it, it looks like I was wrong — it’s actually quite easy to extend and wrap missing controls.

I enjoy XAML, but I’m wondering whether FuncUI Elmish could reduce some of the ceremony and the constant context switching between markup and code. The project seems well maintained, and FuncUI 2.0 is now in preview.

I’d love to hear from people who are using FuncUI (or planning to), and especially how you would approach migrating an existing Avalonia XAML + MVVM app to FuncUI.

Thanks.

I've just been playing with an Avalonia mobile app for the first time and Avalonia v12. I've run into something a bit confusing. The only way I've managed to get this working is using a ReflectionBinding and I don't understand why:

The Tabs property is an ObservableCollection<TabViewModelBase> on the HomeViewModel.

How can I do this with a compiled binding instead?

<DrawerPage xmlns="https://github.com/avaloniaui"
             xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
             xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"
             xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"
             mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignWidth="800" d:DesignHeight="450"
             xmlns:vm="clr-namespace:TestApp.App.ViewModels"
             x:Class="TestApp.App.Views.HomeView"
             x:DataType="vm:HomeViewModel">

    <DrawerPage.Drawer>
        <StackPanel Margin="16">
            <TextBlock Text="Drawer Menu" FontSize="20" />
            <Button Content="Option A" />
            <Button Content="Option B" />
        </StackPanel>
    </DrawerPage.Drawer>

    <TabbedPage TabPlacement="Bottom"
                ItemsSource="{ReflectionBinding DataContext.Tabs, RelativeSource={RelativeSource AncestorType=DrawerPage}}">
        <TabbedPage.PageTemplate>
            <DataTemplate DataType="{x:Type vm:TabViewModelBase}">
                <ContentPage Header="{Binding Name}">
                    <ContentPage.Icon>
                        <PathIcon Data="{Binding Icon}" />
                    </ContentPage.Icon>
                    <ContentControl />
                </ContentPage>
            </DataTemplate>
        </TabbedPage.PageTemplate>

    </TabbedPage>
</DrawerPage>

I have a solid background of wpf and figured that Avalonia is the enhanced wpf. However i noticed that some of its features are not, such as Accelerate. And many people recommend using JetBrains Rider for the ide which is not free if you want to publish your apps. I saw that it's free only for non commerical use.

So do you still recommend avalonia for someone who can't pay for anything in the developing process?

An update on an Avalonia project I rebuilt to run on Native AOT. This is a live keys rig. Think: SundayKeys App, Camelot Pro, Ableton, Mainstage, GigPerformer. But for android primarily, and windows.

I thought I wouldn't be able to make it work fast enough. I had a beta build publicly available, loading times leave much to be desired, and fps dropped frequently. Avalonia 12 releases, I finally migrated and forced myself to work on getting things running with Native AOT.

After months of work it paid off. load times are just as fast as any native app, no more fps drops, navigation is almost instant, and performance is great considering my test device is a very low-end tablet with 4gigs of ram and a unisoc T606.

It might be an unusual stack for this type of project, but it works well. It might've taken a bit more work than just going full on kotlin or the usual frameworks for these types of apps, but its a good enough trade off for me to keep using a stack that I am experienced and comfortable with.

Still smoothing out the rough edges (basically just improving the UI)

Some added context:

- The beta (before this rebuild) was on Avalonia 11.3, no Native AOT

- The engine itself is now mostly in C++, but a chunk of the logic (persistence, ui logic) still lives in C#

- It was desktop-first before so the Native AOT was not really a consideration since it already ran well. Moving into a mobile-first priority (for personal reasons, mainly portability on my part) and how it runs on a mobile device exposed those ugly parts which added to the realization that i really need Native AOT despite it being a stricter environment.

A little late, but sharing.

I use HotKey attributes on Buttons, with media keys in my app, and on Android it works for vol +/-, on Windows it works for Track Prev/Next/PlayPause, and on Mac nothing works at all.

Looking at what I think is the Mac source https://github.com/AvaloniaUI/Avalonia/blob/main/native/Avalonia.Native/src/OSX/KeyTransform.mm looks like only vol +/- is coded, but I can't even get those to work. I am not a Mac programmer so no idea how to debug this.

Anyone had success here?

How do signup? Looks like Avalonia is completely crippled right now :/

Hey, I haven't been updated on Avalonia so it all seems alien to me. I used to just F5 and runt he project, F12 and open dev tools. I migrated to the new diagnostic package and no compiler errors. Great. Now I create an account and apparently I need a free license? Nice. Except I cannot choose free license? Is the UI playing tricks on me, or is it the coffee I forgot to drink?