Iced 0.14 has been released (Rust GUI library)
40 comments
·December 7, 2025lazypenguin
bikelang
In case you’re not aware - Pop!_OS has built their cosmic desktop environment on top of iced.
satvikpendem
Alternatively, Flutter desktop with flutter_rust_bridge works great. Sure, not fully Rust, but Flutter has way more packages on the GUI side than, I'd say, all of the Rust GUIs combined, simply due to how much older it is.
k_bx
I'd rather use Tauri with any web front-end like React (which we do in my company)
airstrike
and it's slow as molasses, at least in my experience
avtar
For anyone curious about accessibility support, looks like it's a WIP with contributions from System76 staff <3 https://github.com/iced-rs/iced/issues/552
And TIL about AccessKit https://github.com/AccessKit/accesskit
dotancohen
I've got a stagnating Python Qt app prototype that I need to actually write properly. It's a personal project so I can do that without affecting users. I need to decide between Rust and Iced or stick with Python and Qt.
Python has a VLC library that embeds VLC behind the scenes for audio playback, and Qt had facility to work with it. This is terrific as I need to support a wide variety of codecs (voice recordings) and I need to change playback speed during playback. Does Rust or Iced have such capability to embed VLC? Not the VLC UI elements, just to use VLC behind the scenes.
thorn132
This might be what you're looking for: https://docs.rs/vlc-rs/latest/vlc/
There's also PyO3 for using Python libraries from Rust, if no bindings or substitutes are available.
dotancohen
Nice, thank you! I see grt_rate() and set_rate() methods, so that might just work. I'll be setting up a prototype soon, much appreciated.
k_bx
The COSMIC DE (by System76, default in Pop_OS distro) is written using their iced fork, which hopefully will be upstreamed eventually.
sho_hn
Why did they fork it?
nicoburns
I believe it's a soft fork where they're treating Iced as upstream. Having their own fork just means they can land changes quicker.
airstrike
They have needs that are specific to COSMIC, so they maintain a separate fork, but they update their fork to match the latest upstream release.
They also contribute to iced indirectly via cosmic-text and other crates.
tomnipotent
The last iced release was September 2024, more than a year ago. I imagine they had constraints that made it impossible to wait for upstream patches to be merged (if at all) and it was simply more tenable to fork and worry about merging later.
tuananh
they had release just yesteday but yeah, it's quite long between releases.
wonklebonkle
Iced is a wonderful dead-simple framework. I hope it forever maintains the simplicity which combines nicely with Rust’s features.
One thing I love about Iced and miss in Qt is writing the software in a single language. Qt has chosen to introduce multiple languages into their framework which makes the entire codebase a huge learning curve. In Qt you write your display layer in QML then your UI logic in Javascript and any backend advanced logic in C++. It is frankly exhausting.
In Iced you write in Rust and use Cargo packages. This gives the developer ultimate composability and clarity of their application as well as powerful tools from an established ecosystem. If Qt wanted to provide a powerful Qml tool, they have to write it and build all of the IDE integration.
For the record Qt used to be moving in a pure C++ direction but that changed when Qml came onto the scene.
rubymamis
I actually love that separation. QML is a great language for writing beautiful, responsive, modern UI with animations easily. C++ is great for performance and logic. I don't like Javascript but I don't need to write a whole lot of it. I wrote my note-taking app's block editor in QML and C++ if some people are curious[1].
mroche
I gave Notes/Plume a try a year or so ago, it was an interesting experience. I ended up falling back to Joplin as I could use it on macOS, iOS, and Fedora with synchronization via Dropbox.
I've always been curious about productizing apps like these, from a financial/business perspective have you found Daino worthwhile or enough of a success (by your standards) to continue developing it as a proprietary application?
rubymamis
Hi! That put a smile on my face (: I'm working now on a mobile version with real-time sync, so maybe give it another try when it comes out.
Not really, not yet. Once my FOSS app was popular I used to earn a livable amount of money from ads on the website. But after a SEO crash that all went down the drain and the money I'm getting now from subscriptions to Daino Notes is nice but not livable. I've been working the last year (at a really awesome place) doing React programming (my first salary job, actually) and at nights and weekends working on Daino.
I actually got many requests to license Daino Notes' block editor. So I've figured there's a business there. I'm working on something I'm calling Daino Qt which is a collection of different components to accelerate Qt apps development (so I'm also its client). It will include my block editor, components for mobile - current Qt components on mobile are extremly shitty - so I'm planning on changing that with things like native-feeling swipeable stack view, native-feeling text editing, etc. And maybe Qt C++ client SDK for InstantDB (and more stuff).
Hope I can sell this as well while also consuming these components for Daino Notes and other apps I will develop.
wonklebonkle
Did you ever write a pure C++ Qt application with QtWidgets?
rubymamis
Yes, my FOSS note-taking app[1] used to be pure Qt Widgets. Recently, I've added the Kanban feature that uses QML (this and the editor settings should be the only parts in QML, if I remember correctly).
ktpsns
Haven't used Qt for a few years, but back then QML, QtQuick, etc have been optional features. You absolutely could write all your Qt logic in C++ only, in a somewhat similar way like the code shown in the iced READMEs. It is the same in any other classic GUI toolkit such as GTK+.
Biggest drawback in qt/c++ used to be the MOC. I guess they still have not gone rid of it, haven't they?
dotancohen
I write all my Qt in Python. I've never used the C++ bindings. But in Python you don't need to deal with QML or JavaScript.
amelius
I did some Qt programming in Python (PySide6), but ran into segfaults, which should of course not happen no matter what you do in a scripting language (except when using modules like ctypes). Many of these cases were related to object lifetime handling which is difficult to do correctly in Qt, and many people have written about it. In Python (a garbage-collected language) one should not have to worry about this.
dotancohen
I also use PySide. No segfaults, but I'm not doing anything complicated.
wonklebonkle
Are you writing QtWidgets or QtQuick in Python? My understanding is that QML is mandatory for QtQuick apps.
dotancohen
I use QtWidgets. I've never touched QtQuick.
mootoday
I recently started to get an interest in writing a GUI with Rust. In particular, a database GUI.
Initially, I thought Tauri with Svelte. Then I learned about gpui (https://www.gpui.rs/) and I'm intrigued.
TIL about iced, which seems to have been around for a while.
Before I embark on building a prototype UI for my app with all three libraries, does anyone have hands-on experience they can share?
chironjit
I've built apps with Iced, Dioxus and PopOS's version of Iced. Here is my opinion:
1) Iced requires you to style everything in their own styling methods. It's not as intuitive as CSS. I found that, coming from using CSS, I struggled to recreate the style to the same high bar I expected from websites using css.
2)LLMs are not as familiar with Iced's styling, and will struggle with helping you plus also dealing with the breaking changes between Iced versions. Same to a lesser extent with Dioxus
3) Dioxus is easier to build by hand and via LLMs since you just use CSS/tailwind CSS. That said, even Dioxus is rough on the edges, you occassionly get some weird bugs, that you just have to deal with
4)PopOS' Iced version is great if you're using it on PopOS specifically but will require you to install a separate style pack on other linux distros to get the styling of the windows to show correctly. It's more mature than the original Iced IMO, though it's opinionated styling(of it's starter boilerplate) may be less to your liking. While I haven't used it in some time, I would consider it an almost independent fork by now
5) Last but most important negative IMO of Iced and Dioxus is their release cadence. Iced 0.14 has now launched more than a year since 0.13. For some the stability is great, but for frameworks that are still maturing with lots of improvements pending, I think it's actually important to have faster release cadences so that you know issues you face are not left hanging for a fix for a year.
Now onto more practical stuff: 1) If you need simple, standalone apps, any one will work. I think this may be true for your app idea
If you need speed of change, multi platform, etc, you will likely end up with Tauri. In that case, you might as well use the front-end framework you like.
2) None of the frameworks give you a pathway to publishing except Tauri. Basically, only Tauri really puts that as part of its guide, and so when you are going to Publish, you will be using Tauri's guide anyway
3) If you need multi-processing, Dioxus is out of your option, or you will end up using Tauri with Dioxus as your front-end
mootoday
Thank you, I appreciate the in-depth opinion! I think Tauri with SvelteKit is going to be my first prototype, likely followed by gpui because I'm impressed by Zed which is built with gpui.
Also, TIL about PopOS, thank you!
airstrike
you can use the iced master branch at any time to take advantage of the latest features.
besides, new releases have nothing to do with fixing your specific issues.
and the pop os fork has historically rebased to the latest upstream release so not sure why you think it's independent
airstrike
i'm building "Cursor for business users" with spreadsheets and documents in lieu of a code editor.
I'm 90kloc in and couldn't be happier
I encourage you to join the Discord and look around
jenadine
There is also Slint, if you want another option. https://slint.dev
eviks
Is there at least one Rust GUI library without something basic broken?
przmk
It would have helped if you told us what you think is broken in Iced.
andsoitis
Inspired by The Elm Architecture, Iced expects you to split user interfaces into four different concepts:
State — the state of your application
Messages — user interactions or meaningful events that you care about
View logic — a way to display your state as widgets that may produce messages on user interaction
Update logic — a way to react to messages and update your state
stackghost
I use Halloy, one of the applications featured in the readme, on the regular. It's great and the UI is very pleasant. I don't enjoy writing rust and very much wish someone would port iced to other languages.
clumsysmurf
From the GUI perspective, I hope Halloy correctly supports proportional fonts soon. They kinda work but not everything is aligned correctly.
globalnode
tcl/tk in python is boring but gets the job done, and its not that hard to customise buttons with a canvas if you really want. i think its underrated.
I think the Rust community is sleeping on the potential of iced for traditional desktop gui. I monitor the gui space in Rust closely and have seen many toolkits come and go. In my opinion a desktop gui library/framework needs to solve two things to be useful: architecture and advanced widgets.
egui has served me well and is eagerly recommended in "what gui should I use" threads since it solves the widget problem well in an easy-to-use package. However, any sufficiently advanced application ends up needing a nice architecture to maintain development speed and enjoyment. I've found whether using egui/slint/fltk/etc. you end up having to roll your own system. When you start needing things like undo/redo you suspiciously start architecting something that smells like the elm architecture.
Iced is the only Rust toolkit that I track that solves the architecture part upfront. The message pattern is hugely powerful but it is hard to appreciate until you've really gotten in the weeds on larger applications. Once iced reaches a point where there is an advanced set of widgets available I suspect its popularity will rise accordingly.
As a comparison, one of the most successful desktop gui toolkit of all times (Qt Widgets) solved the architecture/widget duality long ago with the signal/slot system and advanced widgets like treeviews, datagrid, etc. Since then we must have had hundreds of "desktop" toolkits across all languages that can draw buttons and dropdowns but nobody has toppled the king yet for building advanced desktop GUIs (although there were a few close competitors in C# with WPF and Java with Swing they only solved the widget part in my opinion). I like to think iced can take this mantle one day, best of luck to them and congrats on the 0.14 release.