Iced is a cross-platform GUI library for Rust that brings the simplicity and type-safety of functional reactive programming to desktop and web applications. Inspired by Elm and The Elm Architecture, Iced provides a batteries-included API that emphasizes ease of use while maintaining strong type safety guarantees. The library supports Windows, macOS, Linux, and web platforms, making it suitable for developers seeking to build responsive user interfaces across multiple operating systems.
The core architectural approach in Iced divides applications into four distinct concepts: State representing the application's data, Messages capturing user interactions and events, View logic for displaying state as widgets, and Update logic for reacting to messages and modifying state. This separation of concerns follows Elm's proven patterns and enables developers to reason about their applications more clearly. The library handles layout, event processing, and rendering automatically once these four components are defined.
Iced's feature set includes a comprehensive collection of built-in widgets such as text inputs and scrollables, with support for creating custom widgets. The library offers responsive layout capabilities and includes debug tooling with performance metrics and time traveling functionality. First-class support for async actions through futures enables developers to handle asynchronous operations naturally within the reactive framework. The ecosystem is deliberately modular, allowing developers to use only the components they need.
The rendering architecture is renderer-agnostic, with two built-in renderers available. The iced_wgpu renderer supports Vulkan, Metal, and DirectX 12 through the wgpu library, while iced_tiny_skia provides a software-based fallback option. This flexibility allows applications to choose the rendering backend that best suits their requirements. A windowing shell is included to handle platform-specific window management concerns.
The repository's contributor base overlaps with major projects including Microsoft's VSCode, the Rust language repository, and Microsoft's TypeScript project, indicating its relevance within the broader Rust ecosystem.
Iced originated as an experimental attempt to bring Elm's simplicity into Coffee, a 2D game library, with initial development occurring in May 2019. The project evolved from a renderer-agnostic library into a comprehensive, end-user-focused GUI framework while maintaining its modular design philosophy. The library is currently marked as experimental software, with an active roadmap and ongoing development. Iced's development is sponsored by the Cryptowatch team at Kraken.com, providing sustained support for the project's evolution.
