Python & Gtk (& sometimes Glade)
Interesting, I think this is a good choice too if you want cross platform and to avoid potential future geopolitical issues that may crop up given the way the world is going.
Ask HN: What toolchains are people using for desktop app development in 2025?
61–70 of 136 posts
Re: Ask HN: What toolchains are people using for desktop app development in 2025?
#62Topping my list of GUI toolkit requirements are cross-platform and native look & feel. As far as I know, Qt still beats everything else in these areas on the desktop. It's mostly excellent.
However, I find The Qt Group's commercial licensing (and their tactics as reported by various people on HN) a little scary. If I were to go commercial, I think I would stick with LGPL Qt and link dynamically or give customers my object files for re-linking, because I get the impression that accepting a commercial Qt license could restrict my ability to use open-source Qt elsewhere. I suppose there might be some other way to safely navigate those waters, but from what I've read, The Qt Group has a reputation for making this far from hassle-free. It's not an immediate problem because I currently use Qt only for open-source and personal tools.
I have grown tired of C++, so I've been using Python to drive Qt. The bindings are very good, mirroring the C++ API so closely that I just use the C++ docs when I need to look something up.
I've also been watching for Qt bindings to other compiled languages, mainly for distributing non-Linux GUI apps more simply than Python allows. Such bindings often turn out to expose only Qt Quick, which lacks functionality that I sometimes need, but there are a few that expose Qt Widgets. For example, these Go bindings:
I hope we'll eventually see a cross-platform GUI toolkit rivaling Qt in a language more pleasant than C++ (and ideally easier to bind to other languages). The one being developed for internal use by the Zed editor has some promising ideas about how to render native-looking text, which I think is a good start:
Re: Ask HN: What toolchains are people using for desktop app development in 2025?
#63Now that Chromium supports the File System Access API on desktop and mobile, I am building every software I need as HTML+JS+CSS. Before that, handling files in the browser was cumbersome. You had to offer download and upload links for users to manage files. And handling whole directories was impossible. But now web apps are like native software tools that you can use to edit and manage files on the file system. And t…
What about FireFox, does/will it support file system access? I'm not an expert, just thinking this way and don't like Chromium. The idea is to use light web server in application + browser with JS. This makes it easier and more convenient as it can naturally run remote, on microprocessor. Also LLMs are good at generating such UIs.
https://caniuse.com/native-filesystem-api
Looks like Firefox does not support it currently.
Re: Ask HN: What toolchains are people using for desktop app development in 2025?
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Qt used to be what I used as well, but the licensing has become so repulsive for professional use that I now refuse to touch it now (not even for my open source side projects where this wouldn't be an issue). Too bad the hopes from the early Nokia adoption days got smashed by MS mole Elop and the later owners of Qt.
I have a small business license which I use for developing 3 commercial application. It is ~$1000 per year and the licensing seems quite reasonable.
why are you paying for a license? are there non-LGPL features you're using?
Re: Ask HN: What toolchains are people using for desktop app development in 2025?
#65As someone who loved Turbo Pascal, for the past 3 years I use Lua and LÖVE. https://akkartik.name/freewheeling
Have you looked at Free Pascal and Lazarus? It's an excellent open source and cross-platform implementation of Object Pascal and Delphi.
Re: Ask HN: What toolchains are people using for desktop app development in 2025?
#66Lazarus is the open source equivalent to Delphi these days, and for the most part it's awesome. (The documentation, on the other hand... just isn't fit for purpose) I've been using Visual Studio Code and Github Copilot together, and it seems to work ok. I've not used it heavily, though, as I'm retired.
I've found that you can mostly just use old Delphi books as a starting point for learning Lazarus.
Re: Ask HN: What toolchains are people using for desktop app development in 2025?
#67Qt with QML for a somewhat embedded use case. I think it hits a really nice intersection of native speed, GPU acceleration, interfacing with C++, and ease of development. I wouldn't really recommend a career out of it.
> I wouldn't really recommend a career out of it. Care to say why? I ask because that's what I use at work: C++ and Qt Yes, I'd prefer Rust and Slint/Tauri. But like a prostitute I don't do what I love, I do what pays the bills.
> Yes, I'd prefer Rust and Slint/Tauri.
Ah, you like masochism I see. I bet you use it for your personal projects, but not at all for commercial projects. It’s just not there yet.
Re: Ask HN: What toolchains are people using for desktop app development in 2025?
#68Python & Gtk (& sometimes Glade)
Interesting, I think this is a good choice too if you want cross platform and to avoid potential future geopolitical issues that may crop up given the way the world is going.
To be fair I haven't had reason to care about shipping for Windows yet (though I believe it's reasonably simple), only MacOS and Linux, and no mobile.
Re: Ask HN: What toolchains are people using for desktop app development in 2025?
#69I have been recently playing with Dioxus and I kinda like it. I too am dismayed that we are using browser to target desktop but here we are I guess.
Thanks, I wasn't aware of it.
What would you think are the pros and cons over various alternatives (like Flutter, Avalonia, Lazarus, etc.)
Thanks.
Re: Ask HN: What toolchains are people using for desktop app development in 2025?
#70- Some mentions of Lazarus and FreePascal (so basically a cross-platform open source Delphi equivalent). And I'd agree with them.
- For C# I like AOT assemblies using Uno or Avalonia.
- For Go I like TCell (which does cross-platform console mode text GUIs [with cursor positioning, colours, mouse, etc]).
- If you're doing vibe coding I find it tends to work best with Electron.
- The big omission here is anything Python; I don't do desktop apps in Python so can offer nothing. Same for Ruby, though Hotwire Native looks interesting.