The Essential UI Kit for Xamarin.Forms is a free, open-source collection of XAML template pages for building cross-platform mobile apps, created by Syncfusion.
What is the Essential UI Kit for Xamarin.Forms?
The Essential UI Kit for Xamarin.Forms is a free and open-source repository of elegantly designed XAML templates for Xamarin.Forms apps, maintained by Syncfusion. It takes Xamarin.Forms projects as input and provides ready-to-use XAML pages for common mobile scenarios such as login, e-commerce, chat, onboarding, and more. The templates run on Android 5.0 (API 21) and later, iOS 9.0 and later, and UWP Build 17763 and later, and require Xamarin.Forms version 4.0.0.425677 or higher. Syncfusion created the kit to help developers ship polished interfaces without starting from scratch.
Key Features
- MVVM-based templates — Every template follows the Model-View-ViewModel pattern, so the code integrates cleanly with any MVVM framework and keeps the UI and business logic decoupled.
- Cross-platform compatibility — The templates work on Android, iOS, and UWP, with layouts optimized for phones, tablets, and desktop screens.
- Pre-designed screen collection — The kit includes XAML pages for login, article reading, e-commerce product display, chat, feedback forms, navigation, onboarding, about, and notification screens.
- Right-to-left rendering — XAML layouts support RTL languages, making the templates usable for localized apps.
- Style-based customization — Appearance is controlled through styles, so you can rebrand the colors, fonts, and spacing without editing each page's markup.
- Visual Studio extension — A marketplace extension lets you add the templates to your project with a few clicks, instead of copying files manually.
- Companion preview app — A free Google Play app installs the kit's screens so you can preview every template on your device before integrating it.
Who is it for?
The Essential UI Kit suits Xamarin.Forms developers who need production-ready interface screens without designing them from scratch, and Syncfusion customers who want to combine these templates with the company's enterprise controls. It also helps mobile app prototyping teams that must produce clickable demos for login, onboarding, or e-commerce flows quickly — the templates already include the XAML layout, and the MVVM structure makes swapping in mock data straightforward.
What can you do with the Essential UI Kit for Xamarin.Forms?
- Mobile app developers: drop pre-built XAML pages into a Xamarin.Forms app to implement a login or onboarding flow in minutes, then customize the styles to match the brand.
- Prototypers and UX designers: use the Google Play preview app to evaluate each template on a real device and pick the right visual pattern for a client demo.
- Enterprise teams: pair the kit's templates with Syncfusion's Xamarin UI controls to assemble back-office dashboards or customer-facing apps that require a consistent look across Android, iOS, and UWP.
How do you add the templates to a project?
The fastest route is the Visual Studio Marketplace extension, which installs the templates so you can add them to your Xamarin.Forms project with a few clicks. You can also clone the GitHub repository and copy the XAML pages and their view models directly into your app, then adjust the styles to match your branding.
License and requirements
The templates are released under the MIT license, so you can use and modify them freely in personal and commercial projects. The kit depends on Syncfusion's Xamarin UI controls and the FFImageLoading library, which carry their own licenses, and the demo images come from Pexels, Unsplash, and Undraw.
