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Table of Contents
Introduction
The traditional method of providing web interfaces to Go programs is via a built-in web server. Wails offers a different
approach: it provides the ability to wrap both Go code and a web frontend into a single binary. Tools are provided to
make this easy for you by handling project creation, compilation and bundling. All you have to do is get creative!
Features
- Use standard Go for the backend
- Use any frontend technology you are already familiar with to build your UI
- Quickly create rich frontends for your Go programs using pre-built templates
- Easily call Go methods from Javascript
- Auto-generated Typescript definitions for your Go structs and methods
- Native Dialogs & Menus
- Native Dark / Light mode support
- Supports modern translucency and "frosted window" effects
- Unified eventing system between Go and Javascript
- Powerful cli tool to quickly generate and build your projects
- Multiplatform
- Uses native rendering engines - no embedded browser!
Roadmap
The project roadmap may be found here. New functionality and public behaviour changes use a WEP (Wails Enhancement Proposal), submitted as a draft pull request rather than a feature-request issue.
Getting Started
Wails has two active versions:
| Version | Status | Install | Docs |
|---|
| v2 | Stable | go install github.com/wailsapp/wails/v2/cmd/wails@latest | v2.wails.io |
| v3.0.0 | Stable | go install github.com/wailsapp/wails/v3/cmd/[email protected] | wails.io |
Full installation instructions are available for v2 and v3.
Sponsors
This project is supported by these kind people / companies:
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Thanks to CodeRabbit for supporting Wails with AI code reviews.
FAQ
-
Is this an alternative to Electron?
Depends on your requirements. It's designed to make it easy for Go programmers to make lightweight desktop
applications or add a frontend to their existing applications. Wails does offer native elements such as menus
and dialogs, so it could be considered a lightweight electron alternative.
-
Who is this project aimed at?
Go programmers who want to bundle an HTML/JS/CSS frontend with their applications, without resorting to creating a
server and opening a browser to view it.
-
What's with the name?
When I saw WebView, I thought "What I really want is tooling around building a WebView app, a bit like Rails is to
Ruby". So initially it was a play on words (Webview on Rails). It just so happened to also be a homophone of the
English name for the Country I am from. So it stuck.
Stargazers over time
Contributors
To improve the v3 documentation, follow Write documentation with M-Press for downloads, installation, preview and submitting a PR.
The contributors list is getting too big for the readme! All the amazing people who have contributed to this
project have their own page here.
License
Inspiration
This project was mainly coded to the following albums:
