I started writing a program that needed to have a table with 1 million rows. This means it needs to be virtualised. Pretty common in GUI libraries. The only Rust GUI library I found that could do this easily was gpui-component (https://github.com/longbridge/gpui-component). It also renders text crisply (rules out egui), looks nice with the default style (rules out GTK, FLTK, etc.), isn't web-based (rules out Dioxus), was pretty easy to use and the developers were very responsive.
Definitely the best option today (I would say it's probably the first option that I haven't hated in some way). The only other reasonable choices I would say are:
* egui - doesn't render very nicely and some of the APIs are amateurish, but it's quick and it works. Good option for simple tools.
* Iced - looks nice and seemed to work fairly well. No virtualised lists though.
* Slint (though in some ways it is weird and it requires quite a lot of boilerplate setup).
All the others will cause you pain in some way. I think the "ones to watch" are:
* Makepad - from the demos I've seen this looks really cool, especially for arty GUI projects like synthesizers and car UIs. However it has basically no documentation so don't bother yet.
* Xilem - this is an attempt to make an 100% perfect Rust GUI library, which is cool and all but I imagine it also will never be finished.
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https://www.boringcactus.com/2025/04/13/2025-survey-of-rust-...
I started writing a program that needed to have a table with 1 million rows. This means it needs to be virtualised. Pretty common in GUI libraries. The only Rust GUI library I found that could do this easily was gpui-component (https://github.com/longbridge/gpui-component). It also renders text crisply (rules out egui), looks nice with the default style (rules out GTK, FLTK, etc.), isn't web-based (rules out Dioxus), was pretty easy to use and the developers were very responsive.
Definitely the best option today (I would say it's probably the first option that I haven't hated in some way). The only other reasonable choices I would say are:
* egui - doesn't render very nicely and some of the APIs are amateurish, but it's quick and it works. Good option for simple tools.
* Iced - looks nice and seemed to work fairly well. No virtualised lists though.
* Slint (though in some ways it is weird and it requires quite a lot of boilerplate setup).
All the others will cause you pain in some way. I think the "ones to watch" are:
* Makepad - from the demos I've seen this looks really cool, especially for arty GUI projects like synthesizers and car UIs. However it has basically no documentation so don't bother yet.
* Xilem - this is an attempt to make an 100% perfect Rust GUI library, which is cool and all but I imagine it also will never be finished.