Avalonia for Windows

Win32 underneath, the XAML your team already writes on top, and five more targets out of the same project.

Platform support

Windows is a first-class target, not a box we tick.

Avalonia calls Win32 directly and draws every control itself. There’s no wrapper toolkit in between, nothing beyond the ordinary .NET SDK you already have installed, and no platform-specific code to maintain alongside the rest of your app.

Windowing

Win32, called directly

No wrapper toolkit, nothing beyond the standard .NET SDK.

Rendering

Skia

GPU accelerated, with a software fallback.

Architectures

x64 and ARM64

ARM64 on Windows 11; x64 back through Windows 10 22H2.

Runtime

.NET 8.0 or later

The SDK you already have. No workload install step.

Every figure above is published in the Avalonia support matrix, which lists the exact builds we test and the ones we keep working on a best-effort basis.

Read the support matrix

Shipping today

Real apps, not concept demos.

These are production Windows applications rather than samples, and each of them also builds for at least one other operating system out of the same project.

ODC Studio

The desktop studio for the OutSystems low-code platform, built with Avalonia and shipped for Windows and macOS from one codebase.

Fluent Search

Instant application, file and browser-tab search for Windows 10 and later, with a plugin ecosystem built on top of it.

MultiDrive

Drive backup, cloning and restore for Windows, with a dense operational interface built entirely in XAML.

Avalonia recorded 410M builds in the first half of 2026 alone, and carries over 31,000 stars on GitHub.

Browse the showcase

Coming from WPF

Your team already writes this.

Avalonia is the framework WPF developers recognise. Grid and DockPanel, styles and templates, two-way bindings, attached properties, MVVM and the same XAML compiler model. The concepts carry over because Avalonia never invented replacements for them.

That matters most on the parts of a migration nobody budgets for. Your custom controls stay custom controls, your value converters stay value converters, and your team keeps the judgement it built over a decade instead of relearning a new mental model alongside a new API surface.

<!-- The one line that differs from your WPF file -->
<Window xmlns="https://github.com/avaloniaui"
        xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
        x:Class="Contoso.Invoices.MainWindow"
        Title="Invoices">
  <DockPanel>
    <StackPanel DockPanel.Dock="Top" Orientation="Horizontal">
      <TextBox Text="{Binding Query, Mode=TwoWay}" Width="240" />
      <Button Content="Search" Command="{Binding SearchCommand}" />
    </StackPanel>

    <DataGrid ItemsSource="{Binding Invoices}" />
  </DockPanel>
</Window>

For a WPF codebase too large to port by hand, XPF runs it unmodified on macOS and Linux as a commercial compatibility layer.

Look at Avalonia XPF

How it looks

Native enough to disappear. Open enough to become your own.

Avalonia ships a Fluent theme covering every built-in control, so a new project looks like it belongs on Windows 11 before you write a line of styling.

Then it gets out of your way. Because Avalonia draws its own controls rather than wrapping the operating system’s, every colour, corner radius, template and animation is a style resource you can override. Teams with a design system diverge completely; teams who want to blend in change nothing. Both are one project, and both render identically on every machine, because the widget behaviour is ours rather than whichever Windows build the user happens to be running.

Avalonia rendering a Windows 11 style combo box, slider, toggle switch, button and calendar — Avalonia’s Fluent theme, rendering the built-in controls with no custom styling applied.

Native to Windows

Cross-platform doesn’t mean lowest common denominator.

Avalonia exposes the Windows integrations your users expect, and every one of them is opt-in, so reaching for a Windows detail never costs you the other five targets.

<Window xmlns="https://github.com/avaloniaui"
        TransparencyLevelHint="Mica, AcrylicBlur, Transparent"
        ExtendClientAreaToDecorationsHint="True">

Mica, Acrylic, and chrome you draw yourself

Name the effects you want in priority order and Windows gives you the best one it can: Mica on Windows 11, Acrylic blur back to Windows 10 1803, plain transparency below that. ActualTransparencyLevel reports at runtime which one you actually got, and extending the client area hands you the title bar to draw yourself.

<TrayIcon Icon="/Assets/app.ico" ToolTipText="Contoso">
  <TrayIcon.Menu>
    <NativeMenu>
      <NativeMenuItem Header="Open" Command="{Binding Show}" />
    </NativeMenu>
  </TrayIcon.Menu>
</TrayIcon>

The notification area

A real tray icon with a native context menu behind it. Pair it with ShowInTaskbar and you have the minimise-to-tray behaviour every Windows utility is expected to have.

var host = new WinFormsAvaloniaControlHost
{
    Dock = DockStyle.Fill,
    Content = new InvoicesView(),
};
Controls.Add(host);

Migrate one screen at a time

WinFormsAvaloniaControlHost puts an Avalonia view inside a running Windows Forms application, so a migration can proceed screen by screen instead of as a single cutover nobody wants to sign off.

var handle = TopLevel.GetTopLevel(this)
    ?.TryGetPlatformHandle();
// handle.Handle is the HWND

Down to the HWND

NativeControlHost embeds HWND-based Win32 controls inside an Avalonia layout, and any Avalonia window will hand you its HWND when you need to call Win32 yourself.

var settings = TopLevel.GetTopLevel(this)!.PlatformSettings!;
settings.ColorValuesChanged += (_, e) =>
    Accent = e.AccentColor1;

Follows the system, unless you say otherwise

PlatformSettings reports the Windows theme and accent colour, and ColorValuesChanged fires the moment the user changes either. FluentTheme swaps light and dark to match, until you pin it.

<Button AutomationProperties.Name="Search invoices"
        Command="{Binding SearchCommand}" />

Narrator reads your app

Avalonia exposes its visual tree through UI Automation, so Narrator and other assistive technology see real controls. OnCreateAutomationPeer covers the ones you built yourself.

var files = await TopLevel.GetTopLevel(this)!
    .StorageProvider.OpenFilePickerAsync(new()
    {
        AllowMultiple = true,
        FileTypeFilter = [FilePickerFileTypes.Pdf],
    });

The real Win32 dialogs

The file pickers are the actual IFileDialog rather than something we drew to look like it, and the clipboard carries text, HTML, RTF and file lists through Win32 with OLE drops from Explorer.

Every API on this page is documented, with the platform caveats spelled out.

Windows platform guide

Getting it installed

Signed before SmartScreen gets a chance to warn anyone.

Avalonia produces an ordinary .NET application, so the packaging and deployment tooling your organisation already approved keeps working. Parcel is the part that runs it.

One packaging run, every target

Describe the app once (project path, name, version, targets) and every release after that starts from the same saved configuration. That one file also builds the macOS and Linux versions in parallel, so a Windows installer and a macOS DMG finish in the same run.

SmartScreen stops warning people

Windows flags unsigned installers, and most users stop right there. Authenticode and Trusted Signing support makes the warning disappear, as part of packaging rather than after it.

MSIX and the Microsoft Store

Package with the Windows SDK tooling and publish to the Store, or side-load the same bundle through App Installer.

MSI, Intune and group policy

Build a classic installer and push it through the deployment channel your IT team already runs, with no separate approval to win.

Icons from one SVG

Point Parcel at a single vector file and it produces the icon formats Windows wants, for the application and the installer alike.

Single file and NativeAOT

Trim and publish ahead of time for a smaller download and a faster cold start, with no runtime for the user to install.

Nobody ships from a laptop

The Parcel CLI runs your saved configuration headlessly, so every release builds in CI exactly as it does on your desk, and the signing certificate lives there.

Agents can drive it

Parcel ships an MCP server alongside the CLI, so the packaging step is available to the AI tooling your team already has open.

Parcel also signs the Windows build with Authenticode in the same run that builds macOS and Linux.

See Parcel

Every target

The same project builds the other five.

None of the Win32 depth above (Mica, the tray icon, the real IFileDialog) locks the project to Windows. Adding macOS, Linux, iOS, Android or the browser means adding a target, not forking the team.

Windows

Direct Win32 calls, x64 and ARM64.

You’re here

Keep the Windows build. The other five come from the same project.

Install the templates, run the sample, and add macOS or Linux when you’re ready. The framework is MIT licensed, and mobile or the browser are the same story: one more target, not a fork.

Get started with Avalonia