.NET MAUI contains a limited number of controls out of the box. However, there are free alternatives available for everyone!
If you’ve been building Flutter apps for a while and then returned to .NET MAUI, you may quickly notice the limited number of controls available to start with. Of course, you can write your own controls, but why bother when there are free alternatives available?
Here are three libraries that offer additional controls for .NET MAUI. Have fun exploring them!
Xceed
The Xceed Toolkit for .NET MAUI is available on GitHub and Nuget. It offers the following controls:
- Border
- Button
- ToggleButton
- RepeatButton
- NumericUpDown
- ContentControl
- ButtonSpinner
- Card
They come with 48 accent colors built-in and support custom styling. You can find all the details on their GitHub page. It’s a good option for personal projects, although the number of controls is rather limited.
✅ Works on Android, iOS, Windows, MacOS
✅ Source code included
⚠️ Xceed name, logo, and copyright notice required in final product
⛔ Commercial usage not allowed
DevExpress .NET MAUI Controls
The DevExpress .NET MAUI Controls is a collection of controls that is available for free. You are required to create an account and purchase a free license. Then you can download the library and use it.
DevExpress is known for its exceptional documentation, which includes online documentation, a knowledge base, and Youtube training videos. You can find everything you need at the following links:
And here is a list of controls they provde:
- MAUI Data Grid
- MAUI Scheduler
- MAUI Chart
- MAUI Collection View
- MAUI Data Form & Editors
- MAUI TabView
DevExpress provides many powerful controls, and the fact that they are free makes it a no-brainer. However, it is important to note that desktop systems are not currently supported. If you can live with that, go for it.
✅ Commercial usage allowed
⚠️ Works on Android and iOS only
⛔ No source code available
.NET MAUI Community Toolkit
The .NET MAUI Community Toolkit is an open source project maintained by Microsoft on GitHub. The toolkit introduces new controls, but it doesn’t solely focus on them. It also includes animations, behaviors, converters, and other useful add-ons.
Speaking of controls, here is what you can expect:
Layout
- DockLayout
- StateContainer
- UniformItemsLayout
View
- AvatarView
- DrawingView
- Expander
- LazyView
- MediaElement
- Popup
- SemanticOrderView
Alert
- Toast
- Snackbar
The .NET MAUI Community Toolkit is always a solid choice when developing .NET MAUI apps. Even if you don’t need the controls, other parts of the toolkit might be interesting for you.
✅ Works on Android, iOS, Windows, MacOS, and Tizen
✅ Source code included
✅ Commercial usage allowed
⚠️ Copyright notice required in final product
Conclusion
With these free libraries you can add new controls to your .NET MAUI apps for free. If you happen to know other free toolkits, let me know in the comments.
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