After a long stretch of design, iteration, and quiet building, ProntoGUI 1.0 is officially launched. The App is ready to download, the open-source Go library is live on GitHub, and the personal edition is free for anyone who wants to build with it.
If you’ve ever wanted to ship a real desktop application from Go — without wrestling with Electron, CGo bindings, or learning a whole second UI framework — there’s nothing standing between you and trying it today.
What ProntoGUI Is
ProntoGUI lets you build native graphical interfaces for Go programs using nothing but Go. Your application logic stays in Go. The UI renders through a separate, polished App that handles all the platform-specific drawing work for you. The two communicate over a clean streaming protocol, so you get a responsive native experience without ever touching Dart, JavaScript, or C.
The system has two parts:
- Golib — the open-source Go library you import into your program. BSD-3 licensed, hosted at github.com/prontogui/golib.
- The App — the renderer that displays your GUI on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Free for personal use, with a commercial edition for teams and companies shipping paid software.
Free for Personal Use
The personal edition of the App is free. No trial timer, no feature gates, no “first N users” cap — if you’re building for yourself, learning, prototyping, contributing to open source, or working on side projects, ProntoGUI is yours to use.
This isn’t a loss-leader or a limited promotion. It’s how the product is meant to work. Go developers should be able to pick up ProntoGUI, build something real, and decide on their own time whether it’s right for them. I’d rather have you spend a weekend building a tool you actually use than spend ten minutes deciding whether to commit to a trial.
The commercial edition exists for the situations where personal use isn’t the right fit — for example, companies building internal tools or solutions, developers shipping commercial products, teams that need formal support and licensing. I will be providing more details on commercial licensing in the coming weeks.
Why Early Access (for Now)
You’ll notice that downloading the App goes through a short request step rather than a direct download link. That’s deliberate, and it’s temporary.
Right now, I want to know who’s trying ProntoGUI. Not because I’m gatekeeping — every request gets approved — but because at this stage, knowing my early users by name lets me support them properly, follow up when something breaks, and make sure no one gets stuck in silence. A direct anonymous download would be faster, but it would also mean losing the chance to actually help the first wave of people building with this.
Over time, as the product matures and the rough edges get sanded down, this will streamline into a straightforward download-and-update flow — the way you’d expect any developer tool to work. For now, the small extra step is how I keep the experience personal while there’s still a lot to learn from each new user.
A Note for Early Adopters
There’s a real difference between using a 1.0 product and using a 5.0 product, and I want to be honest about that. ProntoGUI works, and I’m proud of what 1.0 ships with — but the API will evolve, edge cases will surface, and your feedback over the next several months genuinely shapes what comes next.
If you’re someone who wants to be part of that — building something real with ProntoGUI and willing to share what’s working and what isn’t — I’d love to hear from you directly. Reach out through the site or open issues on GitHub. I’m responsive, and early users who engage tend to get a lot of my attention, simply because there aren’t that many of you yet and your feedback is disproportionately valuable.
This isn’t a formal program with rules and tiers. It’s an invitation: if you’re early and engaged, I want to support you well.
How to Get Started
Two links, in whichever order makes sense for you:
Explore the Go library. Head to github.com/prontogui/golib to see what building with ProntoGUI looks like in code, browse the examples, and star the repo if you’d like to follow along.
Download the App. Visit prontogui.com/early-access to get the App and start building.
What Comes Next
Launching 1.0 isn’t a finish line — it’s the start of the part where the product actually meets its users. Here’s what I’ll be focused on from here:
- Writing about how to use ProntoGUI. Practical posts, walkthroughs, and patterns drawn from real questions and real code. The best topics will come from what early users actually ask.
- Gathering feedback and responding to questions. Issues, emails, DMs — whatever channel you reach me through, I’ll be paying attention.
- Refining the roadmap. Some of what I think 1.1 and 1.2 should be will turn out to be right, and some of it will turn out to be wrong once real users start building real things. Your input is how I find out which is which.
- Fixing bugs and improving the product. Steadily, honestly, with releases that ship when they’re ready.
In other words: the work doesn’t change shape much from here. I’ll keep building, keep listening, and keep sharing what I learn along the way.
For now: it’s out, it’s free for personal use, and I’d love to see what you build with it.
Thanks for being here at the start.
— Andy, Founder of ProntoGUI