Building Graphical Go apps is Fyne Andrew Williams, FyneLabs

Learn how to build cross-platform desktop, mobile & web apps with Fyne - a pure Go GUI toolkit offering native performance, simple APIs & zero dependencies.

Key takeaways
  • Fyne is a cross-platform GUI toolkit for Go that enables building native graphical applications that run consistently across desktop, mobile and web platforms

  • Applications built with Fyne compile to native binaries with no runtime dependencies, providing native performance without cross-platform compromises

  • The toolkit focuses on simplicity and ease of use, with a descriptive API that avoids complex layout semantics while still providing powerful UI capabilities

  • Fyne supports automatic dark/light mode adaptation, responsive layouts, and platform-specific integrations like system tray and global menus

  • The project has become one of the most popular cross-platform GUI toolkits, reaching around 15% of Flutter’s popularity with a small core team of under 10 contributors

  • Applications are built using pure Go code, with no markup languages or separate UI description files needed - everything is defined programmatically

  • The toolkit provides built-in widgets, containers, dialogs and UI components that work consistently across platforms while maintaining native look and feel

  • Fyne includes testing utilities and helpers for UI automation, making it possible to write tests for graphical applications

  • The project emphasizes community involvement and open source principles, with hundreds of thousands of users across Slack, Discord and Matrix channels

  • Recent additions include WebAssembly support for web deployment, cloud storage integration, and ongoing work on camera/sensor support for mobile platforms