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What are the best cross-platform GUI toolkits?

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19 Options Considered

19 Options ConsideredPricePopular Language BindingsLicense
Qt
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Java / Swing
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wxWidgets
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wxPython, wxLua, wxRuby, more...–
Agar
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JavaFX
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Qt

Alex
EnterprisingCocytus
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

It looks great

•••
Even though beauty is in the eye of the beholder, Qt apps are some of the best looking ones out there. They use the standard OS look and feel
Yoshiyuki
EnterprisingCocytus
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Mature and rich library

•••
The are modules for networking, translation, database, data formats, printer support, and more.
Endi Sukaj
Belle
Peter J. Mello
Top Pro

Best documentation of any development platform

•••
The comprehensiveness of the Qt5 documentation is setting a new bar in the industry. Not only does it explore the entire toolkit in incredible depth, but it does so without being obtuse or using an excess of unfamiliar language.
Holo Deck
Top Pro

Great integration

•••
Qt integrates itself perfectly into all major desktops and operating systems.
C++4Life
Top Pro

Global community

•••
The community behind Qt is both massive and approachable. Digia (also owners) are joined by the likes of Intel, KDAB, ICS, Canonical and numerous others in sponsoring development, while communities such as KDE also contribute significantly. Forums are active, mailing lists are open, irc channels ch...
Endi Sukaj
Peter J. Mello
Top Pro

Event handling is very simple

•••
Qt was written in C++, as opposed to GTK which was written in C. The fact that C++ has been described at "C with classes" lends itself to explaining how the handling of events is so much simpler under Qt.
EnterprisingCocytus
Top Pro

Mobile support

•••
Valentin Sourice
NobleIhy
Top Pro

Open-source

•••
NobleIhy
Top Pro

Good documentation

•••
Professional, thorough documentation with examples, available either in a web browser or in the stand-alone desktop client called assistant.
EnterprisingCocytus
Top Pro

Bindings for Python and other languages

•••
WhiteLilac
EnterprisingCocytus
Top Pro

Stable

•••
Only a few bugs. It is easy to migrate between major versions.
Yoshiyuki
EnterprisingCocytus
HelpfulVali
Top Con

GUI Render

•••
On Intel video cards, qml windows have render issues.
Yoshiyuki
C++4Life
Top Con

Expensive licence for non-open source developers

•••
EnterprisingCocytus
Top Con

Few community widgets available

•••
Yoshiyuki
EnterprisingCocytus
Solon
Top Con

Non-standard C++ features

•••
Signal/slots and introspection are managed by a C++ precompiler, the meta object compiler (MOC).
Ray
Holo Deck
Top Con

Limited SVG support

•••
Compared to other toolkits QtSVG supports only SVGTiny 1.2.
See 14 more Pros & ConsSee 14 more Pros & Cons

Java / Swing

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meikl
Top Pro

Several look and feels available

•••
meikl
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Part of Java

•••
Swing is part of the Java API.
meikl
Top Pro

Very good and powerful API

•••
E.g. separate models.
meikl
Top Pro

Powerful controls

•••
E.g. JTable which works fine on every platform with very large row counts, e.g. 100.000+.
meikl
Top Con

Bugfixes rely on Oracle

•••
meikl
Top Con

No real native look

•••
Though the importance of the native look seems to have dropped the last years by the raise of in-browser-applications.
meikl
Top Con

Only for JRE-based languages

•••
See 5 more Pros & ConsSee 5 more Pros & Cons

wxWidgets

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Wiliam Kaster
Top Pro

Mature

•••
wxWidgets was started in 1992 by Julian Smart
NicolasRaoul
Top Pro

Open source

•••
Wiliam Kaster
Top Pro

Truly native look and feel

•••
It uses the platform's native API rather than emulating the GUI.
AdventurousBirdu
Top Con

Not supported in python 3

•••
NicolasRaoul
Top Con

Android port not totally usable yet

•••
See 3 more Pros & ConsSee 3 more Pros & Cons

Agar

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JavaFX

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Electron

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Yoshiyuki
rein
Top Pro

Healthy community

•••
Github is behind electron and there are a lot of big companies using it to make their cross-platform apps.
rein
Top Pro

Great documentation

•••
Electron has a nice website with great documentation. It also features a lot of samples.
Atle Magnussen
Top Pro

Excellent

•••
Create functional desktop apps with your web skills. Gentle learning curve if you already know web.
rein
Top Con

Not native

•••
Electron uses a web view. This basically means it is just a website wrapped to look like a native application. This is convenient because you can use web tech to develop the application, but it won't be so performant.
Monika
Holo Deck
Top Con

No system integration

•••
As it is basically a website running inside a window, there is no integration with the host system.
EnchantingRenpet
Top Con

Apps can have memory issues

•••
Apps made with Electron are likely to have memory issues unless you specifically design the app with efficient coding.
Monika
Holo Deck
Top Con

Poorly optimized and resource intensive

•••
It's like running a Chrome-tab for every app you open.
See 5 more Pros & ConsSee 5 more Pros & Cons

nuklear

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ideasman42
Top Pro

A single-header ANSI C gui library

•••
C++4Life
Top Pro

MIT/Public Domain License

•••
C++4Life
Top Pro

No dependencies (not even the standard library if not wanted)

•••
C++4Life
Top Pro

Small codebase (~18kLOC)

•••
C++4Life
Top Pro

Customizable library modules (you can compile and use only what you need)

•••
C++4Life
Top Pro

Focus on portability, efficiency and simplicity

•••
C++4Life
Top Pro

Fully skinnable and customizable

•••
Know any negative aspects of this option?
See 6 more ProsSee 6 more Pros

GTK+

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Know any positive aspects of this option?
Kristaps
Holo Deck
Top Con

Terrible Integration

•••
Looks and feels like an alien on all other platforms than GNOME.

Java / SWT

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meikl
Top Pro

Actively developed

•••
Endi Sukaj
meikl
Top Pro

Open source

•••
meikl
Top Pro

Native controls

•••
meikl
Top Con

Inherits limitation of native controls

•••
E.g. slow handling of tables with a lot of rows on Linux.
meikl
Top Con

No elegant abstraction

•••
As in Swing; no models.
meikl
Top Con

Needs separate libraries for each platform

•••
See 4 more Pros & ConsSee 4 more Pros & Cons

IUP

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Xojo

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Kristaps
Paul
Top Pro

Native, compiled apps

•••
Kristaps
Top Pro

Cross-platform

•••
Supports Windows, macOS, Linux, Pi and iOS.
Urjeet Patel
Top Con

Proprietary Dialect of BASIC

•••
Alex
AssertiveAnbay
Top Con

Missing features

•••
No auto layout so any marginally sophisticated UI will have to be done programmatically. And because its behavior isn’t consistent across platforms, you will have a lot of conditionally compiled UI code The laggish, flickering UI on Windows looks really bad and slow in the 2018 Beta version. You...
Alex
AssertiveAnbay
Top Con

Bugs rarely get fixed

•••
The desktop targets don’t get any more love or attention from Xojo, they are all about mobile and raspberry pi. That’s okay if that’s all you need. But if you rely on it for cross-platform desktop development then that’s a problem. The framework is buggy and inconsistent in its behavior between mac...
AssertiveAnbay
Top Con

Subscription-based/Not free

•••
Using this product you're betting the company will still be around. If they get bought out by an enterprise that wants to use the tech internally, all they need to do is stop offering subscriptions and suddenly you're scrambling to rebuild your entire app on other technology.
AssertiveAnbay
Top Con

No Android support

•••
They plan to eventually support Android, but for now, they only support iOS.
See 5 more Pros & ConsSee 5 more Pros & Cons

Kivy

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thermoplastics
gilch
HardwareHero
Top Pro

Kv design language

•••
Kv design language is designed to work well with scalable graphical user interfaces (GUIs) as one of its primary focuses. It also segregates the logic from the design elements, making them easier to visually distinguish from each other.
gilch
Top Pro

Multitouch gestures

•••
Know any negative aspects of this option?
See 1 more ProSee 1 more Pro

FOX Toolkit

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Paolo
MeticulousAsteria
Top Pro

Concise bindings between widgets and data targets

•••
Paolo
MeticulousAsteria
Top Pro

LGPL license

•••
Permits static linking
Paolo
MeticulousAsteria
Top Pro

C++ widgets

•••
Works on any platform
Paolo
MeticulousAsteria
Top Con

No designer tool or wizards

•••
See 2 more ProsSee 2 more Pros

NanoGUI

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Clutter

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Morphic

Add Video or Image
gilch
Top Pro

Multiple languages

•••
Including Python, JavaScript, Self, Smalltalk, and Objective-C.
Know any negative aspects of this option?

FLTK

Add Video or Image

Tk

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Seesaw

Add Video or Image
HardwareHero
Top Pro

Built on top of Swing

•••
Swing has some negative aspects about it - it's complex and difficult. However, it's stable and can stand alone. Seesaw essentially fills in the gaps that Swing leaves. It patches a lot of the workarounds and hacks that are required with Swing, and allows you to use all the benefits of Swi...
Know any negative aspects of this option?
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162 Community Recommendations

Onze
Fabián Heredia Montiel
rein
ideasman42
Barbara Glowa
Peter J. Mello
Hagen Kaiser
Paul
Rostislav Matl
Kirlovon
Stuart Kearney
+116
Request recommendations from the community
AssertiveAnbay
AssertiveAnbay
Contributor for a month
2
Total 
Recs.
95
Total 
Karma
Xojo
a month ago
We use it at my current employer for our desktop apps. Not a good product. Requires a lot of workarounds to get the app to work well on macOS and Windows, due to bugs and inconsistent behavior across different platforms. It is not as a seamless and as easy as Xojo would have you believe.
Con
 Proprietary Dialect of BASIC
Con
 Bugs rarely get fixed
Con
 Missing features
Con
 Subscription-based/Not free
1See full
MeticulousAsteria
MeticulousAsteria
Contributor for 2 months
1
Total 
Recs.
40
Total 
Karma
FOX Toolkit
Recommended 2 months ago
software designer mainly C++
Pro
 C++ widgets
Pro
 LGPL license
Con
 No designer tool or wizards
Pro
 Concise bindings between widgets and data targets
See full
OrganizedGefjun
OrganizedGefjun
Contributor for 3 months
2
Total 
Recs.
0
Total 
Karma
Agar
Recommended 3 months ago
Nice looking
See full
OrganizedGefjun
OrganizedGefjun
Contributor for 3 months
2
Total 
Recs.
0
Total 
Karma
JavaFX
Recommended 3 months ago
Very Nice Looking default theme
See full
DecisiveBragi
DecisiveBragi
Contributor for 4 months
1
Total 
Recs.
0
Total 
Karma
wxWidgets
Recommended 4 months ago
Lightweight framework. Native looks. Standart c++.
Pro
 Truly native look and feel
See full
Currently displaying 5 out of 162 total recommendations.
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