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webview-bun

bun bindings for webview

Webview is a tiny cross-platform library to make web-based GUIs for desktop applications.

Installation

Click here for instructions on 🐧 Linux The compiled linux library in this package requires GTK 4 and WebkitGTK 6.

To use a different version, see Development section below.

  • Debian-based systems: apt install libgtk-4-1 libwebkitgtk-6.0-4
  • Arch-based systems: pacman -S gtk4 webkitgtk-6.0
  • Fedora-based systems: dnf install gtk4 webkitgtk6.0
Click here for instructions on 🪟 Windows The compiled windows library in this package does not bundle any webview version with itself but rather uses the system installed one.

To bundle a specific version, see Development section below.

The Microsoft Edge WebView2 runtime is required to be installed on the system for any version of Windows before Windows 11. To manually update or install the latest version, follow the steps here.

bun i webview-bun

Example

import { Webview } from "webview-bun";

const html = `
<html>
    <body>
        <h1>Hello from bun v${Bun.version} !</h1>
    </body>
</html>
`;

const webview = new Webview();

webview.setHTML(html);
webview.run();

For more examples, browse the examples folder of this repository.

Single-file executable

You can compile a single self-sufficient executable file for your webview app.

For example, let's create a single executable for the above To-Do app. Clone this repository and run,

bun build --compile --minify --sourcemap ./examples/todoapp/app.ts --outfile todoapp

Tip

By default, a terminal window will also open in the back when double-click opening the executable in Windows and macOS.

🪟 To hide it in Windows:

Download hidecmd.bat from this repository and save in the same folder as the binary. Open terminal there and execute,

.\hidecmd.bat todoapp.exe

🍎 To hide it in macOS:

Add the extension .app in the end of the above bun build command.

Cross-platform compilation

Bun now supports cross-compilation of single executable binaries. To cross compile your webview app for a different platform run,

bun build --compile --target=bun-windows-x64 --minify --sourcemap ./examples/todoapp/app.ts --outfile todoapp

See full list of supported targets.

Bun.serve with webview

If you run a web server it will block the main thread, but using workers you can run the webview window on another thread.

From Bun v1.1.25, you can now embed worker scripts in a standalone executable. Clone this repository then,

cd examples/webserver/
bun build --compile --minify --sourcemap ./index.ts ./worker.ts --outfile webserver

Note

On macOS, this doesn't work due to some bug in bun as webview window doesn't open from a worker.

Documentation

Refer to the comments in the source code for full documentation.

Development

Please format all code with Prettier using the root .prettierrc configuration. You can run bun pretty to automatically format all files if you prefer to not integrated Prettier into your IDE.

Prerequisites

In addition to the dependencies mentioned during the Installation section, you will need additional build tools including;

  • cmake
  • ninja
  • python3

If you are on Windows, you need C++ Build Tools.

Various linux distribution examples:

  • Debian 12
sudo apt install cmake ninja-build python3 clang-14 clang-format-14 libwebkitgtk-6.0-dev
  • Fedora 40
sudo dnf install cmake ninja-build python3 clang15 clang-tools-extra webkitgtk6.0-devel
  • Arch
sudo pacman -S cmake ninja python3 clang14

Building

  • Clone the repository along with the webview submodule.

    git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/tr1ckydev/webview-bun
cd webview-bun
bun i

  • Build the library for your platform.

    Under the hood, it invokes webview's own cmake build system to compile the shared library file.

    bun run build

  • (Optional) Clear the build cache.

    bun clean

The compiled library file can be found inside the build folder.

Customization

🐧 For linux, if you want to use a different WebkitGTK version, change the cmake WEBVIEW_WEBKITGTK_API option in build.ts to one of the available values. Be sure to first install the corresponding version libraries.

🪟 For windows, if you want to bundle a specific webview version instead of using the system installed one, set the cmake WEBVIEW_MSWEBVIEW2_VERSION option to one of the NuGet version strings.

Check out the webview build docs for more options.

Running

Tip

To use your own webview library, set the WEBVIEW_PATH environment variable with the path to your webview shared library file.

Run the following example to see it in action.

bun run examples/basic.ts

For more examples, browse the examples folder of this repository.

Credits

This repository is a port of webview_deno with various changes to work with the bun runtime.

License

This repository uses MIT license. See LICENSE for full license text.