Description: How to get Avalonia setup on MacOS (Big Sur).

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Step: Install .NET

$ dotnet new install Avalonia.Templates
# Check installation:
$ dotnet --version

Step: Install Avalonia

Using the .NET CLI we install the Avalonia UI templates. We can install Avalonia project templates with the following command:

$ dotnet new install Avalonia.Templates

Create a project based on a template

Using the .NET CLI, dotnet, we create a new application folder, called NameOfApp, with project files inside.

#$ dotnet new avalonia.app -o MyApp
$ dotnet new avalonia.mvvm -o NameOfApp

Step: Run the Project

We build and run the application with one single command:

$ dotnet run

Step: Installing Themes

There are a number of themes that we can use to style our Avalonia App. Here’s a list of Avalonia Themes (some links may have died by the time you read this):

• Material
• Classic
• Semi
• WPFOffice

To use the downloaded theme in our application, we need to do two things:

1) Download the theme

Using the .NET CLI we download the theme we want to use:

dotnet add package Material.Avalonia
#dotnet add package Classic.Avalonia.Theme
#Install-Package Classic.Avalonia.Theme

2) Declare what theme to use

In our app we need to declare the name of the installed theme that we want to use:

1. Download the project.
2. Copy Themes folder to our project.
3. Reference the theme in the project’s App.xaml file like the following:

<Application
	...
	<Application.Resources>
        <ResourceDictionary>
            <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
                <ResourceDictionary Source="/Themes/Styles/Generic.xaml"/>
            </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
            <SolidColorBrush x:Key="AccentColorBrush" Color="#007ACC" />
        </ResourceDictionary>
    </Application.Resources>
</Application>