Dock

Context menus and flyouts

Dock defines several built in context menus and flyouts that are attached to its controls. The menu text is stored in the same resource dictionaries as MenuFlyout or ContextMenu definitions. This document lists the available menus and describes how to localize or replace them.

List of built in menus

File	Resource key	Purpose
ToolChromeControl.axaml	ToolChromeControlContextMenu	Menu for tool chrome grip button.
ToolPinItemControl.axaml	ToolPinItemControlContextMenu	Menu for pinned tool tabs.
DocumentTabStripItem.axaml	DocumentTabStripItemContextMenu	Menu for document tab items.
ToolTabStripItem.axaml	ToolTabStripItemContextMenu	Menu for tool tab items.

Each dictionary also declares x:String resources used for menu item headers. For example ToolTabStripItem.axaml exposes keys such as ToolTabStripItemFloatString, ToolTabStripItemDockString and others.

When a dock’s CanCloseLastDockable property is set to false the built-in menus automatically disable commands like Close or Float if executing them would remove the final item from that dock.

Localizing strings

To translate the menu headers, add a resource dictionary to your application with the same string keys. Avalonia will resolve dynamic resources from the application scope first, so your localized values override the defaults:

<Application.Resources>
    <ResourceDictionary>
        <x:String x:Key="ToolTabStripItemCloseString">Schließen</x:String>
        <x:String x:Key="DocumentTabStripItemCloseAllTabsString">Alle Tabs schließen</x:String>
    </ResourceDictionary>
</Application.Resources>

If you need to translate all menus, copy the string resources from the source dictionaries and provide localized versions for each key.

Replacing entire menus

Because the controls refer to their menus using DynamicResource, you can supply completely new ContextMenu or MenuFlyout instances. Define a resource with the same key in your application resources:

<Application.Resources>
    <ResourceDictionary>
        <ContextMenu x:Key="ToolPinItemControlContextMenu">
            <MenuItem Header="Custom action" Command="{Binding MyCommand}"/>
        </ContextMenu>
    </ResourceDictionary>
</Application.Resources>

This approach allows you to customize the menu structure or attach your own commands without modifying Dock’s source.

Extensibility analysis

The current design relies on static resources. Replacing or localizing items is straightforward by overriding resource keys, but adding items dynamically requires providing a completely new menu. There are no hooks to inject menu items at runtime.

If extensibility is important for your application, consider wrapping the default menus in your own ContextMenu definitions so you can append items in XAML. Alternatively you could fork the resource dictionaries and modify them to expose extension points via data templates or bindings.

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