dioxus-mirror/docs/guide/src/en/getting_started/desktop.md

Desktop Application

Build a standalone native desktop app that looks and feels the same across operating systems.

Apps built with Dioxus are typically <5mb in size and use existing system resources, so they won't hog extreme amounts of RAM or memory.

Examples:

• File explorer
• WiFi scanner

Support

The desktop is a powerful target for Dioxus, but is currently limited in capability when compared to the Web platform. Currently, desktop apps are rendered with the platform's WebView library, but your Rust code is running natively on a native thread. This means that browser APIs are not available, so rendering WebGL, Canvas, etc is not as easy as the Web. However, native system APIs are accessible, so streaming, WebSockets, filesystem, etc are all viable APIs. In the future, we plan to move to a custom webrenderer-based DOM renderer with WGPU integrations.

Dioxus Desktop is built off Tauri. Right now there aren't any Dioxus abstractions over keyboard shortcuts, menubar, handling, etc, so you'll want to leverage Tauri – mostly Wry and Tao) directly.

Creating a Project

Create a new crate:

cargo new --bin demo
cd demo

Add Dioxus with the desktop feature (this will edit Cargo.toml):

cargo add dioxus --features desktop

If your system does not provide the libappindicator3 library, like Debian/bullseye, you can enable the replacement ayatana with an additional flag:

># On Debian/bullseye use:
>cargo add dioxus --features desktop --features ayatana
>```

Edit your `main.rs`:

rust {{#include ../../../examples/hello_world_desktop.rs:all}} ```