Skia rendering (.NET / Android)

Skia is the default rendering engine on .NET and Android — reach for it when building a WPF or MAUI desktop app, an Android app hosting AlphaTabView, or any pipeline where you need PNG bytes off a native runtime. alphaTab renders through alphaSkia, a thin wrapper around Google's Skia library, so the same score produces identical glyph metrics across Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android.

The preview below is a browser-side SVG rendering; the code snippet configures the exact same pipeline on .NET or Android, where Skia takes over and produces raster output.

What Skia gets you

• Native raster on every non-web target. Skia is the default engine on .NET and Android, so leaving engine unset already picks it. Setting it explicitly makes intent clear.
• Consistent output across platforms. The same score renders identically on WPF, MAUI, and Android — no more platform-specific font hinting differences.
• PNG export. The alphaSkia canvas exposes toPng(), which is what powers the Node.js headless rendering workflow.
• Custom font support. Register .ttf / .otf files with Environment.registerAlphaSkiaCustomFont and use them in display.resources. See Custom fonts on Skia.

Skia is not available on the Web runtime. If you request engine: 'skia' from a browser context, alphaTab falls back to the platform default (SVG).

Show it in code

import * as alphaTab from '@coderline/alphatab';

const container = getAlphaTabContainer();
const api = new alphaTab.AlphaTabApi(container, {
  core: {
    file: '/scores/song.gp',
    engine: 'skia',
  },
});

getAlphaTabContainer() is a placeholder for the platform-specific step of obtaining the render target — an AlphaTab control on .NET or an AlphaTabView on Android. On desktop .NET you typically embed the WPF or WinForms control; on Android you place AlphaTabView in a layout.

For a Node.js pipeline that renders to PNG on the server, see Node.js headless rendering.

Where to look next

• Node.js headless rendering — Skia in a Node.js pipeline.
• Custom fonts on Skia — register .ttf / .otf files.
• Choosing a backend — side-by-side comparison.
• core.engine in the settings reference.
• alphaSkia on GitHub — the underlying library.