libui

The native cross-platform UI toolkit for Rust

libui is a simple, small and easy to distribute GUI library. It provides a native UI for your platform by utilising your systems API instead of implementing yet another mismatched looking renderer. Thus all libui apps are lightweight, have a native look and feel and start from a highly performant base which is well integrated with the ecosystem on each platform. Because it implements only the common subset of these platform APIs, your apps will work on all platforms and won't have significant behavioral inconsistencies, with no additional effort on your part. If you only plan to support one platform however, a specialized crate will provide a better experience.

Technically, libui is a "rustification" wrapper over the C library libui-ng, which actually abstracts the native GUI framework. That is the Win32 API on Windows, Cocoa on Mac OS X, and GTK3 for Linux and others.

Example

Add libui to your dependency list in cargo.toml with:

libui = "0.3.0"

or use the latest version from the repository:

libui = { git = "https://github.com/libui-rs/libui" }

Next we suggest to have a look at the example applications or start with the minimal example printed here:

#![cfg_attr(not(test), windows_subsystem = "windows")]
#![cfg_attr(test, windows_subsystem = "console")]

extern crate libui;
use libui::controls::*;
use libui::prelude::*;

fn main() {
    let ui = UI::init()
        .expect("Couldn't initialize UI library");
    
    let mut win = Window::new(&ui, "Example", 300, 200, 
        WindowType::NoMenubar);
    let layout = VerticalBox::new();

    // add controls to your layout here

    win.set_child(layout);
    win.show();
    ui.main();
}

We also have documentation on docs.rs for all released versions.

Screenshots

On the left see a libui application running on a GNOME desktop with GTK 3. On the right under Windows 10 with its native user interface.

For more screenshots, see here.

Compatibility

libui 0.2.0 works down to edition 2018 and was successfully tested on:

Windows 7 SP1
Windows 10 22H2
Debian 12 w/ GNOME 43 & GTK 3.24
macOS Big Sur 11.6

libui 0.3.0 works down to edition 2021 and was successfully tested on:

Debian 12 w/ GNOME 43 & GTK 3.24
Windows 10 22H2

Prerequisits & Building

To build the underlying libui-ng your system must have certain tools installed in addition to your rust toolchain. I am trying to cut down on the inconveniences as far as possible.

Linux:

libgtk-3-dev (debian package) - for compiling libui-ng
libclang (debian package) - for generating the libui-ng bindings

Windows:

MSVC (via Windows SDK or Visual Studio)
LLVM - for generating the libui-ng bindings

Note: MinGW-64 does compile and link, but the application won't start due to MinGW missing TaskDialog(). Reportedly, with versions >= 5.X, the function is available.

Acknowledgments

Entity	Acknowledgement	Further Information
@pcwalton	Initial author. Largely shaped this library.	pcwalton/libui-rs
@NoraCodes and others	Further development and maintenance.	rust-native-ui/libui-rs
@tobia	`libui::layout!` macro for easier UI description.	tobia/iui-builder
@andlabs	Author of the C library `libui`.	andlabs/libui
@szanni and @cody271	Maintainers of `libui-ng`. The underlying library to this wrapper.	libui-ng/libui-ng

antler5 / libui-rs