Upgrade Avalonia to SkiaSharp v4

[Illustar0]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

SkiaSharp v4 is now stable, but Avalonia is still using the older SkiaSharp version. This means Avalonia cannot yet benefit from the newer Skia engine, API cleanup, lifecycle fixes, and performance improvements in SkiaSharp v4.

Describe the solution you'd like

Please upgrade Avalonia to SkiaSharp v4, preferably starting with SkiaSharp 4.148.0 or a later stable v4 release.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Staying on the current SkiaSharp version works, but it means Avalonia will continue to miss the improvements and fixes from SkiaSharp v4.

Additional context

SkiaSharp 4.148.0 was announced as the first stable release of SkiaSharp v4 on June 29, 2026. It includes an updated Skia engine, better object lifecycle handling, retired legacy APIs, variable font support, color font palettes, animated WebP encoding, and reported performance improvements in some GPU-backed UI scenarios.

[MishaelBoss]

Yes, I really want that too.

[Cairn23]

Do we have a date for this to support SkiaSharp 4

[jmnquantumsi]

Please.

[kerams]

Just reference SkiaSharp v4 and use it. There's nothing that prevents you, and it works from my own experience on Android, iOS and Windows.

[jangernert]

Just reference SkiaSharp v4 and use it. There's nothing that prevents you, and it works from my own experience on Android, iOS and Windows.

doesn't work with vulkan rendering for me. opengl is fine

[kerams]

Ah, fair, I don't use that.

[maxkatz6]

Avalonia 12.1 already works with SkiaSharp 4.x. We previously confirmed compatibility, and we are going to target it for .NET 11 WASM.

But you need to reference it explicitly, because Avalonia still targets 3.x as a primary release.
Similarly how we did migration between 2.x and 3.x, where previous Avalonia 11 was adjusted to be compatible with both.

We are not going to target SkiaSharp 4.x as a minimally supported version until we are ready for major breaking changes. Likely in 13.0 next year.

[maxkatz6]

If you have issues with Vulkan or another specific feature, feel free to open a bug report here, Avalonia repository, or a SkiaSharp repository (if that issue is reproducible with Avalonia).