MAUI Designer

A native WYSIWYG designer for .NET MAUI XAML, integrated directly into Visual Studio.

MAUI Designer provides a visual editing surface for building and refining MAUI interfaces while keeping the XAML document synchronized with the rendered UI. The designer runs in a separate native MAUI process for IDE stability while appearing inside the Visual Studio editor window.

Status: Beta. Back up important work and keep your project under source control.

Features

Live XAML editing

• Changes made in XAML automatically update the visual canvas.
• Visual changes are written back to the XAML document.
• Invalid or incomplete XAML remains available for correction instead of being discarded.
• Local clr-namespace: controls and controls loaded from external assemblies are supported.

Native MAUI rendering

• Uses real .NET MAUI controls rather than HTML approximations.
• Supports standard layouts, including Grid, VerticalStackLayout, HorizontalStackLayout, AbsoluteLayout, Border, and ScrollView.
• Supports CommunityToolkit.Maui and compatible third-party control libraries.
• Includes an isolated runtime preview for checking the generated interface.

Professional design canvas

• Zoom in, zoom out, fit-to-screen, and 1:1 controls.
• Space-drag and middle-mouse panning.
• Optional rulers, grid lines, and snapping.
• Selection outlines and resize or movement handles.
• Grid row and column editing with visible track guides.
• Design-time interactions select controls without triggering their runtime click behavior.

Toolbox and hierarchy

• Searchable toolbox organized into control categories.
• Representative icons for common control types.
• Expandable hierarchy showing the actual parent-child structure.
• Select controls directly from the hierarchy.
• Drag and drop to reorder or reparent elements.
• Delete controls with a compact hierarchy action.
• Resize either sidebar, or double-click a divider to collapse and restore it.

Editing commands

• Undo and redo.
• Cut, copy, paste, and duplicate.
• Delete and keyboard navigation.
• Right-click context menus for common element operations.
• Drag-and-drop control creation and reordering.

Property editing

• Automatically generated editors for supported MAUI properties.
• Specialized editors for values such as thickness and Grid definitions.
• Fast property updates with visible synchronization feedback.
• Searchable properties panel.

Using the designer

1. Install the VSIX and restart Visual Studio.
2. Open a .NET MAUI solution.
3. Right-click a .xaml file in Solution Explorer.
4. Select Open With....
5. Choose MAUI Designer.
6. Select Set as Default if you want MAUI Designer to handle future XAML designer sessions.
7. Select Open.

The standard Visual Studio XAML editor remains available through Open With....

Architecture and stability

Visual Studio extensions cannot load modern .NET MAUI workloads directly into the Visual Studio process. MAUI Designer avoids that limitation with an out-of-process architecture:

• The Visual Studio extension remains compatible with the Visual Studio extension host.
• Rendering and MAUI workload execution happen in an isolated native process.
• The native designer is embedded into the Visual Studio editor window.
• XAML changes are synchronized through a private local communication channel.
• Each designer pane owns its corresponding native process and lifecycle.

This design prevents MAUI or WinUI dependencies from being loaded directly into devenv.exe.

Requirements

• Windows 10 or Windows 11
• Visual Studio 2022 or Visual Studio 2026
• A .NET MAUI project
• The appropriate .NET and MAUI workloads for building your application

The designer backend included with the extension is self-contained.

Third-party controls

MAUI Designer can discover controls from referenced or manually loaded assemblies. Rendering quality depends on whether a control can be safely instantiated at design time.

Controls requiring runtime services, authentication, platform initialization, or application-specific dependencies may need additional setup before they can render successfully.

Feedback and issues

MAUI Designer is under active development. Please report reproducible problems, unsupported XAML patterns, and rendering differences on GitHub:

github.com/GMPrakhar/MAUI-Designer/issues

When reporting an issue, include:

• Visual Studio version
• .NET and MAUI versions
• The smallest XAML sample that reproduces the problem
• Referenced third-party control packages
• Screenshots or error details where applicable

License

See the included license file or the project repository for licensing information.