wailsapp/wails

Wails is a framework for building native desktop applications using Go for the backend logic and standard web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) for the user interface. It is often described as a lightweight alternative to Electron, the popular but resource-heavy framework that powers apps like VS Code and Slack. The core idea is straightforward: Go developers often want to ship a graphical desktop application but do not want to learn a new native GUI toolkit. With Wails, you write your application logic in Go as you normally would, write your interface as a web page using React, Vue, Svelte, or plain HTML and JavaScript, and Wails packages both into a single distributable binary. The Go backend and JavaScript frontend can call each other's functions directly, you can invoke Go methods from JavaScript and receive results back, without setting up a server or HTTP API. Unlike Electron, Wails does not bundle a full copy of Chromium (Google's browser engine). Instead, it uses the operating system's native WebView component, WebView2 on Windows, WKWebView on macOS, and WebKitGTK on Linux. This means the resulting apps are far smaller (often under 10 MB compared to Electron's 100+ MB), use significantly less memory, and feel more like native applications. The tradeoff is that rendering behavior can vary slightly between platforms. Wails also supports native OS features: system menus, native file dialogs, dark and light mode, and the translucent "frosted glass" window effects seen on macOS. You would use Wails when you are a Go developer who wants to ship a polished desktop GUI application without switching to a different language or embedding an entire browser. It supports Windows, macOS, and Linux. The project is built in Go itself and the CLI handles scaffolding, hot-reloading during development, and production builds.