All 100 ideasCoding
#95 of 100 · Coding
Native GUIs without Electron
A permissively licensed cross-platform GUI toolkit for Rust, Kotlin, Go and similar languages that feels native and avoids Electron.
Asks per year
What the askers want
- Would pay7%
- Want it local or private13%
- Object to subscriptions0%
- Want it open source or self-hosted33%
- Want AI to do it0%
Share of the 15 asks that say so, as judged by Jev.
What exists on Show HN
Built, still asked for31 Show HN launches do this job, and 18 more do part of it. People still ask, so the launches are missed, unknown, or not what they want. Ask what they’re missing before you build.
- Spot – Simple, cross-platform, reactive desktop GUI toolkit for Go2024 · 309 pts
- Rust GUI Library via Flutter2024 · 301 pts
- Slint – A declarative UI toolkit for embedded and desktop2023 · 291 pts
- Sauron-native – A native cross-platform GUI for Rust2019 · 255 pts
- Gova – The declarative GUI framework for Go2026 · 143 pts
- Yue – A new library to create cross-platform GUI apps2017 · 104 pts
- Shirei, cross-platform GUI framework in native Go2026 · 89 pts
- Brisk – Cross-Platform C++ GUI Framework: Declarative, Reactive, Fast2024 · 84 pts
Instead of: Electron, Qt, GTK, Tauri
The idea, as matched
A lightweight cross-platform native GUI toolkit for a modern language (Rust, Kotlin, Go, Python and others) that is free of costly licences and lighter than Electron or embedding a browser.
Jev first matched 21 requests to this idea; a second reader kept 15 of 21.
Every ask, newest first
Each line is an AI paraphrase of what the writer wanted. The link goes to their own words on Hacker News.
Reader’s note. Qt licence cost is a common trigger.
- Oct 2025Wants a modern cross-platform native GUI option with Lazarus-style ease of use. Read it: a comment in “IDEs we had 30 years ago and lost (2023)”
- Dec 2023Wants a multiplatform MIT-licensed alternative to Qt because its licensing is expensive. Read it: a comment in “Qt Widgets Rendering Pipeline”
- Oct 2022Wants a good Rust GUI library. Read it: a comment in “Pop_OS Cosmic Desktop to Make Use of Iced Rust Toolkit Rather Than GTK”
- Mar 2022Wants a permissively licensed QtQuick-like GUI toolkit for embedded devices. Read it: a comment in “Qt Creator 7 Released”
- Feb 2022Wants a BeeWare-like cross-platform native toolkit for typed languages like Kotlin or Rust. Read it: a comment in “BeeWare – write Python, run everywhere using native UIs”
- May 2020Wants a native React-like UI layer on a web renderer without JavaScript, usable from any language. Read it: a comment in “React Native for Windows and Mac”
- Feb 2020Wants a cross-platform tool as easy as Delphi with a modern language, as an alternative to Electron. Read it: a comment in “Delphi”
- Feb 2019Wants an open cross-platform UI library that compiles to each OS's native interface. Read it: a comment in “Show HN: DeskGap – Like Electron, but uses the system webview”
- Dec 2018Wants a WPF-quality cross-platform GUI framework usable from many languages on all major platforms. Read it: a comment in “It is fast or it is wrong”
- Dec 2018Wants a Qt-like Rust UI library with components and CSS-style styling. Read it: a comment in “Windows file access performance compared to Linux”
- Mar 2018Would pay for a cross-platform Electron alternative with mobile support, accessibility and internationalization. Read it: a comment in “Ask HN: Why does Slack App on macOS drain 3GB of memory?”
- Jan 2018Wants a cross-platform GUI toolkit with a native look, better than SWT. Read it: a comment in “Using Java 9 Modularization to Ship Zero-Dependency Apps”
- Oct 2016Wants stable Qt bindings for languages beyond C++ and PyQt. Read it: a comment in “Qt Quick Controls 2.1 and Beyond”
- Mar 2016Wants a modern GPU-accelerated cross-platform GUI library with a permissive license. Read it: a comment in “Ask HN: What 3rd party library do you wish existed?”
- Jul 2013Wants a new open-source widget toolkit as good as WPF. Read it: a comment in “Gotk3: GTK3 the Go way”
Building this?
Read ten of the asks above first, because they say what the existing launches miss. If you ship it, post it as a Show HN so the next run of this list finds it.
Ship it like Vercel, on a server you own
This site runs on ShipTiffin. A push to GitHub deploys it, the way it would on Vercel, but the server is a Hetzner box in your own account. Postgres, sign-in, email, jobs and analytics are already on it, every project gets a hard limit, and nothing is billed by usage.
$19 a month per box, plus about $10 for the server at Hetzner. Open source, so you can also run it yourself for free.