A declarative desktop GUI framework for Go.

Quick start · Examples · Documents

Highlights

• Write your UI in Go. Compose immutable View descriptions with typed props and callbacks. dxui reconciles them with an internal retained tree.
• Build without cgo. Framework and application builds support CGO_ENABLED=0.
• Render on demand. An event- and deadline-driven loop waits when idle.
• Compose everyday interfaces. Inputs, buttons, menus, tabs, overlays, images, and other controls share one styling and interaction model.
• Customize the appearance. Typed theme tokens, runtime light/dark switching, borders, rounded corners, shadows, and interaction states.
• Handle larger applications. Independent native child windows and a keyed, fixed-height virtual list for long collections.
• Use Go-native resources. Pure-Go text and image processing, plus individually linkable Lucide icons through github.com/dxui-org/dxui/icon.

Quick start

Requirements

• Go 1.25 or newer.
• A native desktop environment to run GUI examples.

Run an example

From a local checkout of this repository:

go run ./examples/components

Explore the component catalog, or try a smaller application:

go run ./examples/calc
go run ./examples/login

To try the login example with software rendering:

go run ./examples/login -software

Create an application

Initialize the project:

go mod init example.com/hello-dxui
go get github.com/dxui-org/dxui

Save the following as main.go:

package main

import (
	"log"

	"github.com/dxui-org/dxui"
)

func main() {
	app := dxui.NewApp(dxui.AppOptions{
		Title: "Hello dxui", Width: 480, Height: 240,
	})
	name := ""

	root := func() dxui.View {
		return dxui.Box(dxui.BoxProps{
			Style: dxui.Style{Padding: dxui.Padding(24)},
			Gap:   12,
		},
			dxui.Label("What is your name?"),
			dxui.Input(dxui.InputProps{
				Key: "name", Value: name, Placeholder: "Your name",
				OnChange: dxui.Assign(&name),
			}),
			dxui.Label("Hello, " + name + "!"),
			dxui.TextButton(dxui.ButtonProps{OnPress: app.Close}, "Close"),
		)
	}

	if err := app.Run(root); err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}
}

Run it with go run .. To build explicitly without cgo:

# macOS / Linux
env CGO_ENABLED=0 go build .

# Windows PowerShell
$env:CGO_ENABLED = "0"
go build .

State belongs to your application. UI callbacks update it, and dxui rebuilds and reconciles the root description. Call App.Run directly from main; it blocks until the application closes. Use App.Update to schedule state changes from background goroutines.

Components

Most components use props-first constructors.

Examples

Run any example from the repository root with go run ./examples/<name>.

Contributing

Bug reports, documentation improvements, and focused contributions are welcome. For a rendering or input issue, include your OS/architecture, Go version, reproduction steps, and a minimal example.

In a POSIX-compatible shell with make installed, run:

make ci
make race # requires a host/toolchain with cgo race support

make ci checks formatting, runs vet and tests, builds the framework and public examples with cgo disabled, and invokes the tagged native lifecycle smoke test. A skipped native test is not evidence that the GUI runs on that platform.

For core tests and example compilation in PowerShell:

$env:CGO_ENABLED = "0"
go test ./...
go build ./examples/...

License

dxui is licensed under the MIT License.

Bundled dependencies and assets have their own licenses. See third-party notices for icons, fonts, and other dependencies.