The New Avalonia Visual Studio Extension: A Smarter, Smoother Developer Experience

Your tools should get out of the way. They should elevate your ideas, not interrupt them. With the new Avalonia Visual Studio Extension, available soon to all Accelerate Business and Enterprise users, we’re delivering a major leap in productivity for anyone building Avalonia applications in Visual Studio.

If you’ve ever lost momentum to cryptic XAML errors, fiddly namespace declarations, or IntelliSense that just didn’t get it, this update will feel like a breath of fresh air. It’s faster. More accurate. And it’s designed to keep you in flow.

Let’s take a look at what’s new, why it matters, and how it fits into our larger vision for Avalonia.

Code Editing Enhancements

This update introduces a series of features that reduce friction and sharpen your feedback loop as you work in XAML.

Intelligent Hover Tooltips

Hover over any control, property, or attached member and you’ll now get rich, inline context: the declaring type, full summary documentation, and detailed type information. No more jumping between editor and docs. Everything you need is right there, exactly where you’re working.

Even style selectors and bindings get the same treatment, making it easier to navigate large codebases or revisit older projects with full confidence in what you’re editing.

Smarter, More Helpful IntelliSense

The new code completion engine is deeply aware of your XAML structure, available properties, and your bound view model. It’s fast, accurate, and actually useful.

When using x:DataType, you’ll get full IntelliSense for strongly typed bindings. Suggestions pull directly from your ViewModel. You type, it understands. It’s like having a second pair of eyes that knows your code.

Automatic XAML Namespace Imports

Reference a type and the extension handles the rest. Namespace declarations are inserted automatically. No more guessing prefixes or copying URIs. Just clean, valid XAML that builds.

Dramatically Better Error Reporting

XAML errors have long been a pain point. We’ve rebuilt the diagnostics engine to support multiple simultaneous errors and offer pinpoint-accurate messages. Misused enums? Misspelt properties? You’ll see exactly what’s wrong and where, with no guesswork.

Built on the Foundation of the New Avalonia Designer

These improvements aren’t isolated tweaks. They are the result of deep, ongoing investment in our new visual XAML Designer. As we built the Designer’s internal infrastructure, we realised much of it could dramatically improve the everyday editing experience in Visual Studio. So we decided not to wait.

This will be the first public release to benefit from that work, but it won't be the last.

Why This Matters

Avalonia is growing fast. Our users now include everything from solo developers to some of the world’s largest enterprises. With that growth comes expectation: of polish, of speed, of professional-grade tooling.

This update is part of our commitment to meet that bar and raise it. Whether you’re prototyping on a weekend or delivering multi-platform apps at scale, this new extension makes XAML development smoother, more expressive, and less error-prone.

It’s the kind of experience you expect from a modern UI toolkit.

When You’ll Get It

The new Visual Studio Extension ships as part of our next major update. It will be included automatically in all Accelerate Business and Enterprise plans. If you’re already a customer, there’s nothing you need to do. We'll drop you an email when it's ready for installing.

If you’re not using Accelerate yet, this is exactly the kind of value it was designed to deliver.

On Open Source and Access

We know the question is coming. Why isn’t this open-source?

The answer is simple. These features are powered by the same proprietary engine behind our upcoming Designer. That work represents a major investment, and it is being rolled out early as part of the benefits available to commercial customers.

Open source is and will always be at the heart of Avalonia. But professional teams need more: more polish, more power, more support. That’s what Accelerate exists to provide.

Once this release is out of preview, we’ll expand availability to all Accelerate tiers, including Indie. So even solo developers who back the project commercially will gain access.

What’s Next

The new extension is almost here. It’s fast and designed with real-world Avalonia development in mind. We think it’s going to make your work feel not only more productive, but more enjoyable too.

And this is just the beginning.