Avalonia Previews MAUI For Linux

https://www.i-programmer.info/news/89-net/18750-avalonia-previews-maui-for-linux.html

Publish Date: 2026-03-24 12:18:00

Avalonia has released an initial preview of an Avalonia backend for .NET MAUI. The framework uses .NET 11 (itself in preview), and will mean developers will be able to deploy .NET MAUI apps to Linux and WebAssembly.

Avalonia started life as a cross platform .NET UI framework with XAML, data binding, and lookless or templated controls. Avalonia’s initial support for developing XAML-based applications for Windows, Mac and Linux has been widened to become an open source UI framework for building desktop, mobile, web and embedded applications using a .NET single codebase.

Anyone using Avalonia 12 gets the full benefits, and since these .NET MAUI handlers are built on Avalonia primitives, they can be fully customized through Avalonia APIs. And, thanks to Avalonia being entirely drawn, they’ll look the same on every platform you deploy to.

The Avalonia-based Handlers and target files for .NET MAUI can be used to can replace MAUI’s native controls with drawn controls from Avalonia. It also lets developers deploy to platforms previously unavailable to .NET MAUI UI applications, such as Linux and WASM, as well as through different frameworks, like macOS AppKit.

In addition to providing Linux and WebAssembly support for .NET MAUI, Avalonia says the new backend advances their vision of cross-platform consistency. One thing that cross platform frameworks have to handle is the way controls such as buttons are created. The choice is either to use the controls built into the operating system by calling a platform API; or to draw the controls. The native approach means apps look right to users of the platform, while the drawn solution keeps the app looking consistent across platforms.

MAUI uses native APIs while Avalonia uses custom drawing. The developers of the new version let you choose to use Avalonia controls alongside the MAUI controls, or instead of them. Writing on the Avalonia blog, Avalonia developer Tim Miller said:

“We wanted to close the gap…

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