Best stack for building a desktop app?

Tauri https://tauri.app/

You have to look at old languages for this.

In the order of preference:

Qt (C++), Swing (Java), and Visual Component Library (Delphi) are three tried and tested options for you.

What are your requirements? Performance, development speed, native look and feel, ... Which languages are you familiar with? Do you have a preference with regards to the language?

I have good experience with https://wails.io. It uses a Go backend and a JavaScript frontend with Go functions exposed to the JavaScript side, and events with senders and listeners on both sides. All without the enormous bloat of Electron.

On the JavaScript side you can use whatever you like: plain JavaScript, react, vue, svelte, … whatever you’re familiar with.

And it can cross compile to Windows, Mac and Linux, so all major platforms covered.

FreePascal/Lazarus or Tcl/Tk.

If more time is available, then a core of plus a view part in the native platform language and API.

JetBrains have their tweaks to the JRE available: https://github.com/JetBrains/JetBrainsRuntime

The major problems begin when you want to leverage the GPU or multimedia components in which case you would want something else.

Not a full blown UI kit but lots of cross platform goodies (C++)

https://www.cockos.com/wdl/

https://github.com/justinfrankel/WDL

WDL Virtual Window system:

    Allows the building of dynamic, complex UIs within OS hosted windows
    Included controls for text display, combo boxes, buttons, sliders, list boxes
    Supports full transparency, overlays, controls with shadows/highlights outside of their range
    Fully themeable (uses LICE for compositing)

I got fed up with electron a few months ago and making steady progress building Electrobun.

You can think of it like Tauri but you just write typescript for the main and browser contexts. Under the hood it’s powered by bun and zig.

https://github.com/blackboardsh/electrobun

Still a ways to go (I’m currently porting a large app from electron to electrobun and filling in the api as I go) but check back in a couple months.

It’ll be (in my opinion) the best stack to build desktop apps.

Personal projects, Racket with gui-easy. Close to frictionless GUI development, very nice language(-platform) to build with. Excellent metaprogramming.

Professionally, Java and JavaFX. Decent multi-platform story, there's a config flag for tuning everything, and there's a library for pretty much anything anyone has ever had an issue with and when they don't fit as well as you'd like you just tear it up with reflection and fix.

flutter. specially now that google fired half the team

it's not worse than tauri/electron for desktop, and you get mobile for free if needed.

In general for a great experience on the desktop you want to use the native stack of each platform, so C# / Windows SDK in Windows, GTK in most Linux distros and whatever Mac officially recommends.

You could use electron and build cross platform apps using web technologies, but I'm yet to use an electron based app that doesn't feel like crap.

Electron. /thread

Seriously, even John Carmack would probably use Electron because it provides the most value to customer per unit of effort input.

I've used wxwidgets in the past, both from C and from Python. It's appeal is in its simplicity.

If you're using .net: maui Cross platform for win/linux/mac/ios/android

with no additional context when running on mac/linux/windows, I like boring technologies, doing everything within python running locally while rendering everything in the user's default web browser with basic HTML/js/css

Depending on the use case either Avalonia or Electron.

Most ideas that could be desktop apps would be just as good as web apps or browser extensions. For myself Ive been using libui-ng.github.io/libui-ng/ for a few projects lately