GTKX

Build native GTK4 desktop applications with React and TypeScript.

GTKX lets you write Linux desktop applications using React. Your components render as native GTK4 widgets through a Rust FFI bridge—no webviews, no Electron, just native performance with the developer experience you already know.

npx @gtkx/cli create my-app
cd my-app
npm run dev

import {
  GtkApplicationWindow,
  GtkBox,
  GtkButton,
  GtkLabel,
  quit,
  render,
} from "@gtkx/react";
import * as Gtk from "@gtkx/ffi/gtk";
import { useState } from "react";

const App = () => {
  const [count, setCount] = useState(0);

  return (
    <GtkApplicationWindow
      title="Counter"
      defaultWidth={300}
      defaultHeight={200}
      onClose={quit}
    >
      <GtkBox
        orientation={Gtk.Orientation.VERTICAL}
        spacing={20}
        valign={Gtk.Align.CENTER}
      >
        <GtkLabel label={`Count: ${count}`} cssClasses={["title-1"]} />
        <GtkButton label="Increment" onClicked={() => setCount((c) => c + 1)} />
      </GtkBox>
    </GtkApplicationWindow>
  );
};

render(<App />, "com.example.counter");

• React 19 — Hooks, concurrent features, and the component model you know
• Native GTK4 widgets — Real native controls, not web components in a webview
• Adwaita support — Modern GNOME styling with Libadwaita components
• Declarative animations — Framer Motion-like API using native Adwaita animations
• Hot Module Replacement — Fast refresh during development
• TypeScript first — Full type safety with auto-generated bindings
• CSS-in-JS styling — Familiar styling patterns adapted for GTK
• Testing utilities — Component testing similar to Testing Library

Explore complete applications in the examples/ directory:

• gtk-demo — Full replica of the official GTK demo app
• hello-world — Minimal application showing a counter
• todo — Full-featured todo application with Adwaita styling and testing
• x-showcase — Showcase of all x.* virtual components
• browser — Simple browser using WebKitWebView
• deploying — Example of packaging and distributing a GTKX app

Visit https://eugeniodepalo.github.io/gtkx for the full documentation.

Contributions are welcome! Please see the contributing guidelines and check out the good first issues.

• GitHub Discussions — Questions, ideas, and general discussion
• Issue Tracker — Bug reports and feature requests

MPL-2.0