Go-WebUI v2.5.3

August 19, 2026 · View on GitHub

Go-WebUI v2.5.3

Features · Installation · Usage · Documentation · WebUI

Use any web browser or WebView as GUI.
With Go in the backend and modern web technologies in the frontend.

Features

Parent library written in pure C
Portable (Needs only a web browser or a WebView at runtime)
Lightweight (Few Kb library) & Small memory footprint
Fast binary communication protocol
Multi-platform & Multi-Browser
Using private profile for safety
Cross-platform WebView

GPT

Ask AI Any Question About the Go-WebUI

Installation

Note

Until the next stable release it is recommended to use go-webui's latest development version.

The WebUI C library is vendored into this repository at v2/webui/ as a git subtree, so it ships with the Go module. There is no extra setup step and no submodule to initialize — a plain go get is enough.

As Go module

go get github.com/webui-dev/go-webui/v2@main

As git submodule of your project

The instructions below set up go-webui in a modules subdirectory of a go project.

go-project
├── modules
│   └── go-webui
├── ...
└── go.mod

Add and init the submodule

git submodule add https://github.com/webui-dev/go-webui.git modules/go-webui

git submodule update --init --filter=blob:none

replace the path accordingly in the go.mod file.

require github.com/webui-dev/go-webui/v2 v2.5.3

replace github.com/webui-dev/go-webui/v2 v2.5.3 => ./modules/go-webui/v2

As git clone - for development and contribution purposes

The command below retrieves go-webui as a lightweight, filtered clone.
```
git clone --filter=blob:none https://github.com/webui-dev/go-webui.git
```

Updating the vendored WebUI C library

Maintainers pull the latest WebUI nightly into the subtree with:

git subtree pull --prefix=v2/webui https://github.com/webui-dev/webui.git nightly --squash -m "Update WebUI to nightly"

Usage

Example

<!-- index.html -->
<!doctype html>
<html>
   <head>
      <script src="webui.js"></script>
   </head>
   <body>
      <button onclick="test();">Test Go-WebUI</button>
      <script>
         async function test() {
            // Call a Go function.
            const result = await myGoFunction('Hello From JavaScript');
            alert(result); // "Hello From Go"
         }
      </script>
   </body>
</html>

// main.go
package main

import (
	"fmt"

	ui "github.com/webui-dev/go-webui/v2"
)

func myGoFunction(e ui.Event) string {
   // Get first argument
	name, _ := ui.GetArg[string](e)
	fmt.Printf("JavaScript sent: %s\n", name) // Hello From JavaScript
   // Return a response to JavaScript
	response := fmt.Sprintf("Hello From Go")
	return response
}

func main() {
	// Create a window.
	w := ui.NewWindow()
	// Bind a Go function.
	ui.Bind(w, "myGoFunction", myGoFunction)
	// Show frontend.
	w.Show("index.html")
	// Wait until all windows get closed.
	ui.Wait()
}

Find more examples in the examples/ directory.

Documentation

Enable TLS/SSL

Enable WebUI's security layer by adding the webui_tls build tag.

go run -tags webui_tls <path>

Debugging

To use WebUI's debug build, add the webui_log build tag. E.g.:

go run -tags webui_log minimal.go

Online Documentation (WIP)

UI & The Web Technologies

Borislav Stanimirov discusses using HTML5 in the web browser as GUI at the C++ Conference 2019 (YouTube).

CPPCon

Web application UI design is not just about how a product looks but how it works. Using web technologies in your UI makes your product modern and professional, And a well-designed web application will help you make a solid first impression on potential customers. Great web application design also assists you in nurturing leads and increasing conversions. In addition, it makes navigating and using your web app easier for your users.

Why Use Web Browsers?

Today's web browsers have everything a modern UI needs. Web browsers are very sophisticated and optimized. Therefore, using it as a GUI will be an excellent choice. While old legacy GUI lib is complex and outdated, a WebView-based app is still an option. However, a WebView needs a huge SDK to build and many dependencies to run, and it can only provide some features like a real web browser. That is why WebUI uses real web browsers to give you full features of comprehensive web technologies while keeping your software lightweight and portable.

How Does it Work?

Diagram

Think of WebUI like a WebView controller, but instead of embedding the WebView controller in your program, which makes the final program big in size, and non-portable as it needs the WebView runtimes. Instead, by using WebUI, you use a tiny static/dynamic library to run any installed web browser and use it as GUI, which makes your program small, fast, and portable. All it needs is a web browser.

Runtime Dependencies Comparison

	WebView	Qt	WebUI
Runtime Dependencies on Windows	WebView2	QtCore, QtGui, QtWidgets	*A Web Browser*
Runtime Dependencies on Linux	GTK3, WebKitGTK	QtCore, QtGui, QtWidgets	*A Web Browser*
Runtime Dependencies on macOS	Cocoa, WebKit	QtCore, QtGui, QtWidgets	*A Web Browser*

Wrappers

Language	v2.4.x API	v2.5.x API	Link
Python	✔️	not complete	Python-WebUI
Go	✔️	not complete	Go-WebUI
Zig	✔️	not complete	Zig-WebUI
Nim	✔️	not complete	Nim-WebUI
V	✔️	not complete	V-WebUI
Rust	not complete	not complete	Rust-WebUI
TS / JS (Deno)	✔️	not complete	Deno-WebUI
TS / JS (Bun)	not complete	not complete	Bun-WebUI
Swift	not complete	not complete	Swift-WebUI
Odin	not complete	not complete	Odin-WebUI
Pascal	not complete	not complete	Pascal-WebUI
Purebasic	not complete	not complete	Purebasic-WebUI
-
Common Lisp	not complete	not complete	cl-webui
Delphi	not complete	not complete	WebUI4Delphi
C#	not complete	not complete	WebUI4CSharp
WebUI.NET	not complete	not complete	WebUI.NET
QuickJS	not complete	not complete	QuickUI
PHP	not complete	not complete	PHPWebUiComposer

Supported Web Browsers

Browser	Windows	macOS	Linux
Mozilla Firefox	✔️	✔️	✔️
Google Chrome	✔️	✔️	✔️
Microsoft Edge	✔️	✔️	✔️
Chromium	✔️	✔️	✔️
Yandex	✔️	✔️	✔️
Brave	✔️	✔️	✔️
Vivaldi	✔️	✔️	✔️
Epic	✔️	✔️	not available
Apple Safari	not available	coming soon	not available
Opera	coming soon	coming soon	coming soon

Supported WebView

WebView	Status
Windows WebView2	✔️
Linux GTK WebView	✔️
macOS WKWebView	✔️

License

Licensed under the MIT License.

Go-WebUI v2.5.3

Go-WebUI v2.5.3

Features · Installation · Usage · Documentation · WebUI

Features

Ask AI Any Question About the Go-WebUI

WebUI GPT - Go

Installation

As Go module

As git submodule of your project

As git clone - for development and contribution purposes

Updating the vendored WebUI C library

Usage

Example

Documentation

Enable TLS/SSL

Debugging

UI & The Web Technologies

Why Use Web Browsers?

How Does it Work?

Runtime Dependencies Comparison

Wrappers

Supported Web Browsers

Supported WebView

License

Stargazers