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I’ve been down a remarkably similar path to yours, and I came to the conclusion that if you want native, cross-platform, low-footprint desktop apps, then Qt is

I’ve been down a remarkably similar path to yours, and I came to the conclusion that if you want native, cross-platform, low-footprint desktop apps, then Qt is honestly the only game in town. I know there are other frameworks - imgui, for example, which uses GPU rendering for its widgets - but none that I’ve found check all the right boxes. To me, those boxes are: “I want to write an app using one framework, and when it’s done, I want the person on Mac to think it was made with AppKit; the person on Windows to think it was made with UWP; the person on Ubuntu to think it was made with GTK.” Qt is the closest I’ve found, and it’s still not totally what I want (not including it’s licensing scheme, which also is a huge turn-off).

allanrbo 4y ago
I like Qt too, but when it comes to packaging size, I seem to remember it was a pretty big chunk. 20 or 50 MB or something? I therefore chose wxWidgets over it, for a recent project.
dgfitz 4y ago
Agreed Qt is the play for desktop apps. I use it at work quite a bit, and if you’re careful enough you can just rely on upstream packaging for Linux. Windows isn’t horrible if you’re only relying on base/core and the platform plugins. It’s not tiny, but at least an order of magnitude smaller than an electron app. Mac I do not have any experience with so I can’t speak to that. It really is a fun framework to develop with and it’s signal/slot feature is a delight. I’ve recently developed a Wt web app and the learning curve was basically zero after having the Qt “expertise” I do, quoted because even after 10 years with it I’m always learning something new. The more I learn the less I know kind of thing.
freedomben 4y ago
This is my conclusion too. For cross platform, Qt is the only serious choice. I've been dabbling in GTK and if it's just a personal or linux app then I'll do it in GTK using javascript/typescript (and I'm very curious to try out GTK for windows/mac at some point), but for now a serious app, Qt is the real choice.
nyanpasu64 4y ago
How do you make a single Qt app look like both UWP and GTK? I'm not aware of any Qt Quick Controls 2 style to make QML apps look like GTK apps (like the Adwaita theme), and Qt Widgets on Windows looks like Win32 rather than UWP (either Windows 8 or 10 settings, or the newer rounded colorful Windows 11 style).
- charrondev 4y ago
  If you want to make a nice looking desktop app there are only 2 games in town: - the native platform framework. - electron/web As much flack as slack gets for example it looks 50x better than any QT, GTK, Java, or WxWidgets app I’ve ever seen. Another thread here was talking about how they WxWidgets to make an app that looked native on each platform with a small binary. Unfortunately not a single one of these screenshots looks like it belongs in a modern desktop. https://www.wxwidgets.org/about/screenshots/ https://www.wxwidgets.org/about/screenshots/

allanrbo 4y ago

I like Qt too, but when it comes to packaging size, I seem to remember it was a pretty big chunk. 20 or 50 MB or something? I therefore chose wxWidgets over it, for a recent project.

dgfitz 4y ago

Agreed Qt is the play for desktop apps. I use it at work quite a bit, and if you’re careful enough you can just rely on upstream packaging for Linux. Windows isn’t horrible if you’re only relying on base/core and the platform plugins. It’s not tiny, but at least an order of magnitude smaller than an electron app. Mac I do not have any experience with so I can’t speak to that. It really is a fun framework to develop with and it’s signal/slot feature is a delight. I’ve recently developed a Wt web app and the learning curve was basically zero after having the Qt “expertise” I do, quoted because even after 10 years with it I’m always learning something new. The more I learn the less I know kind of thing.

freedomben 4y ago

This is my conclusion too. For cross platform, Qt is the only serious choice. I've been dabbling in GTK and if it's just a personal or linux app then I'll do it in GTK using javascript/typescript (and I'm very curious to try out GTK for windows/mac at some point), but for now a serious app, Qt is the real choice.

nyanpasu64 4y ago

How do you make a single Qt app look like both UWP and GTK? I'm not aware of any Qt Quick Controls 2 style to make QML apps look like GTK apps (like the Adwaita theme), and Qt Widgets on Windows looks like Win32 rather than UWP (either Windows 8 or 10 settings, or the newer rounded colorful Windows 11 style).

charrondev 4y ago
If you want to make a nice looking desktop app there are only 2 games in town: - the native platform framework. - electron/web As much flack as slack gets for example it looks 50x better than any QT, GTK, Java, or WxWidgets app I’ve ever seen. Another thread here was talking about how they WxWidgets to make an app that looked native on each platform with a small binary. Unfortunately not a single one of these screenshots looks like it belongs in a modern desktop. https://www.wxwidgets.org/about/screenshots/ https://www.wxwidgets.org/about/screenshots/