BUILT WITH AVALONIA
dotMemory & dotTrace logo

dotMemory & dotTrace

by JetBrains

JetBrains logo

About JetBrains

JetBrains is one of the most influential developer tooling companies in the world, with a portfolio of IDEs and developer tools used across the industry — including Rider, IntelliJ IDEA, ReSharper, dotMemory, and dotTrace.

When the .NET profilers team set out to take dotMemory and dotTrace beyond Windows, they evaluated the modern .NET UI landscape and chose Avalonia. JetBrains also ships first-class Avalonia XAML support inside Rider — a story in two halves, told here.

2000

Year founded

30+

IDEs and developer tools

3

Operating systems for dotMemory and dotTrace

2

Profilers built on Avalonia

Avalonia Highlights

  • Familiar WPF-style XAML made the framework an "easy choice"
  • Genuine cross-platform reach for production .NET tooling
  • Mature enough for production-grade developer software
  • Tremendous growth and momentum across recent releases
  • Quick, helpful support from the Avalonia team
  • Powers dotMemory and dotTrace on macOS and Linux
  • First-class Avalonia XAML support inside Rider
As our tools use WPF, Avalonia was an easy choice for us. It is an impressive technology which has seen tremendous growth in recent years, and it feels mature enough to be used for production code.
The dotTrace and dotMemory team· JetBrains
JetBrains dotMemory profiling a SqlSample process on macOS — memory timeline with snapshot markers, heap generation breakdown (Gen 0/1/2 and LOH), and allocation data side-by-side, all rendered in the familiar JetBrains UI
JetBrains dotMemory running natively on macOS — built on Avalonia.

A Two-Sided Relationship With Avalonia

JetBrains is one of the largest names in developer tooling, with a portfolio that spans IntelliJ IDEA, Rider, ReSharper, and the .NET memory and performance profilers dotMemory and dotTrace. The relationship with Avalonia runs in both directions: JetBrains uses Avalonia to ship its own cross-platform .NET tools, and JetBrains supports Avalonia developers through first-class XAML tooling in Rider.

This is the story of how that came to be — first the build, then the integration.

Why Avalonia, an Easy Choice

For years, dotMemory and dotTrace were Windows-only — built on WPF, the natural choice for production .NET desktop applications at the time. When the team decided to take both profilers cross-platform, they spent time evaluating the modern .NET UI landscape. Avalonia stood out: a XAML model close enough to WPF that the team's existing knowledge transferred cleanly, with the cross-platform reach and production-grade maturity their tools demanded.

The migration also gave the team direct experience working with the Avalonia community and core engineers — experience that, in turn, informs Rider's Avalonia tooling.

The JetBrains dotMemory profiling start screen on macOS — choose a process to profile, pick sampled or full allocation data, and start, with the running .NET process list shown below
At JetBrains, we believe in the tools we create and support. That's why we use Avalonia in the development of our own products.
JetBrains
JetBrains dotTrace Viewer on macOS — a Sudoku performance trace with the events filter, threads timeline, hotspots panel highlighting Solver.Solve and Cell.Copy, and an expanded call tree on the right

dotMemory and dotTrace, Now Cross-Platform

The macOS and Linux editions of dotMemory and dotTrace, and their integrations into Rider, are all built with Avalonia. .NET developers profiling on a Mac or a Linux workstation now get the same JetBrains experience their Windows colleagues have had for over a decade. The standalone applications and the Rider-embedded views share an Avalonia foundation, which means improvements to one flow benefit both.

First-Class Avalonia Support in Rider

JetBrains' commitment to Avalonia goes beyond using it. Rider ships full Avalonia XAML support — refactoring, navigation, live previews — the same toolchain depth WPF developers have always relied on, now applied to a cross-platform UI framework. For Avalonia developers, this means an IDE backed by a vendor that uses the framework in production, with tooling shaped by firsthand experience.

It is also a clear signal of where Avalonia sits in the modern .NET landscape: when a major IDE vendor chooses to invest in Avalonia tooling alongside WPF, the framework has crossed from emerging alternative to established platform.

JetBrains Rider editing a SimpleToDoList Avalonia XAML view, with a live preview of the running app on the right and an inline binding-path inspection surfacing a "possible null value" warning in the editor

JetBrains .NET tools — including dotMemory, dotTrace, and Rider — are available natively on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Explore JetBrains .NET tools

Avalonia powers production software at some of the world's leading software companies.

From financial trading floors to global manufacturers, teams choose Avalonia for cross-platform .NET reach without compromise.

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