Is it possible to make desktop GUI application in NET Core

Question

I have been developing Windows Forms programs for few years  I am now looking into  NET Core  including ASP NET Core MVC   I am searching for the new GUI desktop technology  In Visual Studio 2015 update 3 I can t see any option to make a GUI app in  NET Core  What am I missing

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I have been searching for this for ages now and none of the solution above are to my satisfaction.

I ended up working with https://github.com/mellinoe/ImGui.NET for now.

I can confirm it works at least across macos and win10 and claims to be compatible with linux.

Leaving this here in case it can help someone.

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For creating a console-based UI  you can use gui cs  It is open-source  from Miguel de Icaza  creator of Xamarin   and runs on  NET Core on Windows  Linux  and macOS  It has the following components   Buttons Labels Text entry Text view Time editing field Radio buttons Checkboxes Dialog boxes  Message boxes   Windows Menus ListViews Frames ProgressBars Scroll views and Scrollbars Hexadecimal viewer editor  HexView   Sample screenshot

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One option would be using Electron with JavaScript  HTML  and CSS for UI and build a  NET Core console application that will self-host a web API for back-end logic  Electron will start the console application in the background that will expose a service on localhost xxxx  This way you can implement all back-end logic using  NET to be accessible through HTTP requests from JavaScript  Take a look at this post  it explains how to build a cross-platform desktop application with Electron and  NET Core and check code on GitHub

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If you are using  NET Core 3 0 and above  do the following steps and you are good to go   I m going to use  NET Core CLI  but you can use Visual Studio too    md MyWinFormsApp optional step cd MyWinFormsApp optional step dotnet new sln -n MyWinFormsApp optional step  but it s a good idea dotnet new winforms -n MyWinFormsApp I m sorry  this is not optional dotnet sln add MyWinFormsApp do this if you did step  3  Okay  you can stop reading my answer and start adding code to the MyWinFormsApp project  But if you want to work with Form Designer  keep reading   Open up MyWinFormsApp csproj file and change  lt TargetFramework gt netcoreapp3 1 lt TargetFramework gt  to  lt TargetFrameworks gt net472 netcoreapp3 1 lt  TargetFrameworks gt   if you are using netcoreapp3 0 don t worry  Change it to  lt TargetFrameworks gt net472 netcoreapp3 0 lt  TargetFrameworks gt   Then add the following ItemGroup     lt ItemGroup Condition  quot    TargetFramework       net472  quot  gt       lt Compile Update  quot Form1 cs quot  gt         lt SubType gt Form lt  SubType gt       lt  Compile gt       lt Compile Update  quot Form1 Designer cs quot  gt         lt DependentUpon gt Form1 cs lt  DependentUpon gt       lt  Compile gt     lt  ItemGroup gt   After doing these steps  this is what you should end up with   lt Project Sdk  quot Microsoft NET Sdk WindowsDesktop quot  gt      lt PropertyGroup gt       lt OutputType gt WinExe lt  OutputType gt       lt TargetFrameworks gt net472 netcoreapp3 1 lt  TargetFrameworks gt       lt UseWindowsForms gt true lt  UseWindowsForms gt     lt  PropertyGroup gt      lt ItemGroup Condition  quot    TargetFramework       net472  quot  gt       lt Compile Update  quot Form1 cs quot  gt         lt SubType gt Form lt  SubType gt       lt  Compile gt       lt Compile Update  quot Form1 Designer cs quot  gt         lt DependentUpon gt Form1 cs lt  DependentUpon gt       lt  Compile gt     lt  ItemGroup gt    lt  Project gt    Open up file Program cs and add the following preprocessor-if   if NETCOREAPP3 1     Application SetHighDpiMode HighDpiMode SystemAware    endif  Now you can open the MyWinFormsApp project using Visual Studio 2019  I think you can use Visual Studio 2017 too  but I m not sure  and double click on Form1 cs and you should see this   Okay  open up Toolbox  Ctrl   W  X  and start adding controls to your application and make it pretty  You can read more about designer at Windows Forms  NET Core Designer

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tl dr - I m not sure that it would be possible for the  NET Core developers to supply a cross-platform GUI framework  I feel like expecting a cross-platform GUI framework to be bundled into the official tooling  especially an old version of the tooling - you mention that you re running Visual  Studio  2015 update 3  for an early version of  NET Core is a little premature  GUI frameworks are really quite heavy  and dependent on the hardware abstractions already present on the host machine  On Windows  there is generally a single window manager  WM  and desktop environment  DE  used by most users  but on the many different distributions of Linux which are supported  there are any number of possible WMs and DEs - granted most users will either be using X-Server or Wayland in combination with KDE  GNOME or Xfce  But no Linux installation ever is the same  The fact that the open source community can t really settle on a  quot standard quot  setup for a VM and DE means that it would be pretty difficult for the  NET Core developers to create a GUI framework which would work across all platforms and combinations of DEs and WMs  A lot of folks here have some great suggestions  from use ASP NET Core to builds a Web application and use a browser to listing a bunch of cross-platform frameworks   If you take a look at some of the mentioned cross platform GUI frameworks listed  you ll see how heavy they are  However  there is light at the end of the tunnel as Miguel de Icaza showed off Xamarin running naively on Linux and macOS at  NET Conf this year  2017  if you re reading this in the future   so it might be worth trying that when it s ready   But you ll need to upgrade from Visual  Studio  2015 to Visual  Studio  2017 to access the  NET Core 2 0 features

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I m working on a project that might help  https   github com gkmo CarloSharp The following application is written in  NET with the UI in HTML  JavaScript  and CSS  Angular

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AvaloniaUI now has support for running on top of  NET Core on Windows  OS  X  and Linux  XAML  bindings and control templates included  E g  to develop on macOS with Rider   Follow instructions to install the Avalonia dotnet new templates Open JetBrains Rider and from the Welcome screen  Choose New Solution    near the top of the Templates List    More Templates   Button Install Template       browse to the directory where you cloned the templates at step 1  Click the Reload Button Behold  Avalonia Templates now appear in the New Solution Templates List  Choose an Avalonia template Build and run  See the GUI open before your eyes

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You were not missing anything  Microsoft shipped no reasonable way to create GUI applications directly using  NET Core until  NET Core 3  though UWP  Universal Windows Platform  is partially built on top of  NET Core   NET Core 3 0 includes support for Windows Forms and WPF  though it is Windows-only   NET 6 will include  NET MAUI  which will support Windows and macOS desktop applications and mobile applications  with Linux desktop applications supported by the community  not MS    NET 5 will include a preview version of  NET MAUI  For third-party cross platform options  see other answers

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For the special case of existing Windows Forms applications  There is a way - though I don t know how well it works   It goes like this   Take the Windows Forms implementation from Mono   Port it to  NET Core or NetStandard  Recompile your Windows Forms applications against the new System Windows Forms   Fix anything that may be broken by  NET Core   Pray that mono implements the parts you need flawlessly    If it doesn t  you can always stop praying  and send the Mono project a pull request with your fix patch feature   Here s my CoreFX Windows Forms repository   https   github com ststeiger System CoreFX Forms

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You could use Electron and wire it up with Edge js resp  electron-edge  Edge js allows Electron  Node js  to call  NET DLL files and vice versa  This way you can write the GUI with HTML  CSS and JavaScript and the backend with  NET Core  Electron itself is also cross platform and based on the Chromium browser

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Yes  it is possible to develop cross-platform desktop  GUI  applications  for Windows  Linux and macOS  using Visual Studio Code   NET Core  C   GTK  3  gtksharp and Glade as the GUI designer  Here is how

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Windows Forms  and its visual designer  have been available for  NET Core  as a preview  since Visual Studio 2019 16 6   It s quite good  although sometimes I need to open Visual Studio 2019 16 7 Preview to get around annoying bugs  See this blog post  Windows Forms Designer for  NET Core Released Also  Windows Forms is now open source  https   github com dotnet winforms

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NET Core 3 will have support for creating Windows desktop applications  I watched a demo of the technology yesterday during the  NET Conference  This is the only blog post I could find  but it does illustrate the point   NET Core 3 and Support for Windows Desktop Applications

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It will be available using  NET 6  https   devblogs microsoft com dotnet announcing-net-6-preview-1  But you can already create WinForms applications using netcore 3 1 and net 5  at least in Visual Studio 2019 16 8 4

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Yes  it is possible    NET Core doesn t have any components for native GUI application out of the box  However  there is a NuGet package for it that is called Electron NET  as per Gregor Biswanger s answer   Electron is a framework that allows you to build native GUI applications on top of Node js  Electron NET is a NuGet package that allows you to utilise Electron and Node js from within your  NET Core code   The good news is that you don t have to learn JavaScript  Electron or Node js in order to be able to use the NuGet package  JS files do run inside your application  but they get automatically generated by the build process   All you do is build a pretty standard ASP NET Core MVC app  The only difference is that  instead of running in the browser  it runs as a native windowed app  Besides just a few lines of code specific to the Electron NET package  you won t need to learn anything above ASP NET Core MVC   This page provides a tutorial on how to use it  It also contains some links to sample code repositories

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You could develop a web application with  NET Core and MVC and encapsulate it in a Windows universal JavaScript app  Progressive Web Apps on Windows It is still a web application  but it s a very lightweight way to transform a web application into a desktop app without learning a new framework or and redevelop the UI  and it works great  The inconvenience is unlike Electron or ReactXP for example  the result is a universal Windows application and not a cross platform desktop application

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It is now possible to use Qt  QtQuick  and QML with  NET Core  using Qml Net  It is highly performant  not  quot P Invoke chatty quot    fully featured and works across Linux  OS  X  and Windows  Check out my blog post to see how it compares to the other options out there currently  PS  I m the author

[.net-core] Is it possible to make desktop GUI application in .NET Core?

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