Table of Contents

Choose a SkiaSharp view

SkiaSharp view controls create the drawing surface, size it to the control, and provide its canvas through a paint callback. Use a view when drawing belongs in an app UI and you do not need to create, wrap, present, or dispose the SKSurface yourself.

View controls use one of two rendering paths:

View family Typical controls Rendering path Use when
Raster SKCanvasView, SKXamlCanvas, SKElement, SKControl, SKDrawingArea CPU raster surface, then platform presentation You want the broadest support or do not need continuous GPU rendering
GPU SKGLView, SKMetalView, SKGLSurfaceView, SKGLTextureView, SKSwapChainPanel, SKGLElement, SKGLControl Ganesh over OpenGL, OpenGL ES, Metal, ANGLE, or WebGL You render continuously or have a workload that benefits from a GPU-backed target
Note

The shipped view controls use raster surfaces or Ganesh. They do not drive Graphite. Graphite remains a manually managed rendering path.

SkiaSharp.Views.Tizen.NUI.SKGLSurfaceView is an exception to the control naming pattern: it raises raster SKPaintSurfaceEventArgs, not Ganesh-backed SKPaintGLSurfaceEventArgs. See Tizen views.

Draw in the paint callback

Raster controls raise or invoke a callback with SKPaintSurfaceEventArgs. Draw on the provided surface and do not retain its canvas after the callback returns:

void OnPaintSurface(object? sender, SKPaintSurfaceEventArgs e)
{
    var canvas = e.Surface.Canvas;
    using var paint = new SKPaint
    {
        IsAntialias = true,
        Color = SKColors.CornflowerBlue,
    };

    canvas.Clear(SKColors.White);
    canvas.DrawCircle(e.Info.Width / 2f, e.Info.Height / 2f, 100, paint);
}

GL-, ANGLE-, and WebGL-backed controls use SKPaintGLSurfaceEventArgs. Native Apple Metal controls use SKPaintMetalSurfaceEventArgs. All of these event arguments expose an SKSurface; the drawing code still starts with e.Surface.Canvas.

The .NET MAUI SKGLView always exposes the MAUI SKPaintGLSurfaceEventArgs, including on Mac Catalyst where its handler uses a native Metal view.

Choose a platform or integration

  • .NET MAUI - use cross-platform SKCanvasView and SKGLView controls and register their handlers.
  • Android - use native raster, GL surface, or GL texture views.
  • Apple platforms - choose raster, OpenGL, or Metal controls on iOS, tvOS, macOS, and Mac Catalyst.
  • Windows - use WPF, Windows Forms, or WinUI controls.
  • Linux - use the GTK 3 or GTK 4 raster drawing area.
  • Tizen - choose the ElmSharp or NUI control family.
  • Uno Platform - use WinUI-shaped raster and GPU controls with target-specific support.
  • Blazor WebAssembly - use raster HTML canvas or WebGL Razor components.

Choose raster or GPU

Start with the raster control for your UI framework. Move to a GPU control when profiling shows that raster presentation is the bottleneck, or when the app renders a continuously changing scene that benefits from GPU acceleration.

Changing the control does not require changing shared drawing helpers that accept SKCanvas. It does change the platform APIs, event argument type, invalidation model, and GPU availability, so verify the chosen control on every target your app ships.

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