Launching “Building Native GUIs with Rust & Freya”
I am thrilled to announce the launch of my new 10-part tutorial series: Building Native GUIs with Rust & Freya.
For years, the Rust ecosystem has been searching for a GUI story that feels as modern and ergonomic as the language itself. While web-based solutions like Tauri are excellent, sometimes you need the raw performance and consistency of a truly native UI.
Enter Freya.
Why Freya?
Freya is a Skia-based native GUI library for Rust. It brings the component-based model (familiar to React users) directly to native Rust. It supports:
- Hooks & Signals for state management.
- Flexbox-like layout system.
- Cross-platform support (Windows, Linux, macOS).
- Headless testing capabilities.
However, the documentation has often been sparse for beginners. That’s why I created this series.
What’s Inside the Series?
This isn’t just a “Hello World” guide. It’s a complete roadmap taking you from zero to shipping a production-ready application.
- Getting Started: Setting up your environment and local dev workflow.
- Basic Components: Mastering Labels, Rects, and Buttons.
- Layout System: Deep dive into padding, alignment, and spacing.
- State Management: Understanding
use_stateand signals. - Event Handling: Keyboard, mouse, and scroll interactions.
- Styling & Theming: Building beautiful, theme-aware interfaces.
- Advanced Patterns: Custom components and modal architecture.
- Performance: Memoization and virtual lists for speed.
- Testing: Writing headless tests for reliability.
- Deployment: Packaging for cross-platform distribution.
Who is this for?
If you are a Rust developer wanting to build GUIs without embedding a web browser, this is for you. If you are a React developer curious about Rust, Freya’s hook-based API will feel incredibly familiar.
Start Learning Today
The entire series is available for free right now.