One question that I continuously get asked on Twitter is how can I make great looking apps with Xamarin.Forms? It is a great question, and anyone can build great looking apps with a little inspiration and a little styling. Now, I am not a designer, and I don’t claim to be a designer, but there is a lot of great inspiration out there for app designs including Dribbble, uplabs, and others. These designs from talented individuals around the globe can help to influence how your own apps look and feel.
Restaurant app by Oludayo Alli
Built-in awesome in Xamarin.Forms
There are several features in Xamarin.Forms that you can leverage to help bring these designs to life. Look no further than the new Shapes API to draw shapes, lines, polygons, and more. Want a consistent look and feel to your native controls? How about adding Material Design with a single line of code. Group your collections to perfection with CarouselView paired with IndicatorView and of course CollectionView.
Drink gallery app by Javier Suárez
Go further with custom community controls
The Xamarin Community Toolkit continues to add great controls including a DockLayout, Shield, TabView, and more. But there are even more awesome controls from the community including the fabulous Magic Gradients, PancakeView, MaterialFrame, CardView, Shadows, and so many more. Finally, we cannot forget SkiaSharp a general purpose 2D graphics system for .NET.
Component ecosystem
Re-usable UI components from top component vendors like Telerik, UX Divers, GrapeCity, and Syncfusion help you get productive quickly. Be sure to check out the wide number of options when you’re ready to get started!
Island Tracker using community & Syncfusion controls by me!
Get Inspired
Our very own Javier has been collecting amazing examples great looking open-source apps built with Xamarin.Forms for several years now that you can browse through on GitHub. I have already featured a few of these great looking apps, but here are a few more to get you inspired.
Airline flight app by Leomaris Reyes
Cook book app by Steven Thewissen
There are so many more lovely designs to browse through! You can even add your own by simply opening a pull request on Javier’s GitHub repo.
Adobe XD Exporter
Many designs you find online or from your designer may be built with tools such as Adobe XD. You can easily import colors and styles into your Xamarin.Forms app thanks to the XD to Xamarin.Forms exporter from our very own Kym Phillpotts!
Go off and build beautiful apps
Tell us all about your apps by leaving comments below or submitting a pull request to Javier’s GitHub repo. Have terrific tips and tricks? Leave them below and share them with the world.
The Adobe XD exporter seems like it’s been abandoned – it hasn’t been updated since 2019.
Great article I did see a lot of people searching for a easy way to create good looking apps and now here we have a lot of inspiration.
nice article, very informative
I heard about another technology, .NET MAUI will replace the Xamrin technology. And Xamrin is going to end on 2022. Now we got a project, they need cross platform technology. My question is "What technology we can able to suggest for this development?"
Also only beta version of .NET MAUI is now available. They, our customer may not encourage the transition from one technology to another.
Another question..
UWP is dropped, and don't know the future of...
Hello friends! I have a repo with some xamarin.forms designs here: https://github.com/alexandresanlim/XamarinUI.MyGallery