BexaUI

The Hacker's UI Toolkit for Rust.

A GPU-accelerated, native GUI framework designed for building developer tools, terminals, and infrastructure dashboards in Rust.

Unlike generic GUI frameworks, BexaUI treats the terminal as a first-class citizen. No Electron. No web stack. Just Rust, GPU, and a real PTY.

Why BexaUI?

• Built-in Terminal — Real PTY-backed VT100/ANSI terminal emulator with interactive shell, colors, and cursor navigation. No other Rust GUI toolkit ships this.
• GPU Accelerated — wgpu 28 with SDF rendering for crisp rounded corners, borders, and alpha blending at any scale.
• Declarative ui! Macro — Build widget trees like JSX, with compile-time Rust safety. No runtime overhead.
• Flexbox Layout — Powered by taffy with CSS-like semantics. No manual pixel math.
• Reactive Signals — Simple Signal<T> / SetSignal<T> state management inspired by modern reactive frameworks.
• Multi-Window — Spawn new windows from callbacks (like Delphi forms). Each window has its own widget tree.
• Theming — Centralized Theme struct with pre-built palettes (Ocean, Light, Dark).
• Keyboard & Clipboard — Tab/Shift+Tab focus, Enter/Space activation, Ctrl+C/V/X.

Ideal Use Cases

BexaUI is not a general-purpose GUI framework. It is optimized for:

• Custom Terminal Emulators — SSH clients, multiplexers, serial monitors
• DevTools — Log viewers, debuggers, profilers, REPL interfaces
• Admin Panels — Docker/K8s dashboards, database managers, server monitoring
• Infrastructure Tooling — Embedded flash tools, deployment consoles, CI/CD dashboards
• Internal Tools — Company-specific ops tools that need a real terminal

Widgets

Quick Start

use bexa_ui::prelude::*;

fn main() {
    let theme = Theme::ocean();
    let metrics = Metrics::new(16.0, 22.0);

    let (text, set_text) = create_signal("Hello, BexaUI!".to_string());
    let label = Label::new(text, metrics, theme.text_primary);

    let mut btn = Button::new("Click me", metrics)
        .with_colors(theme.button, theme.button_hover, theme.button_active, theme.button_focus)
        .with_border_radius(6.0);
    btn.set_on_click(move || {
        set_text.set("Button clicked!".to_string());
    });

    let root = ui! {
        Container::new().with_padding(32.0) => {
            label,
            btn,
        }
    };

    App::new(root)
        .theme(theme)
        .title("My App")
        .run();
}

Terminal Widget

The terminal widget spawns a real PTY process and renders it with monospace font and ANSI colors. It requires the terminal feature flag.

use bexa_ui::prelude::*;

fn main() {
    let theme = Theme::ocean();
    let metrics = Metrics::new(16.0, 22.0);
    let requests = App::window_requests();

    let mut btn = Button::new("Open Terminal", metrics)
        .with_colors(theme.button, theme.button_hover, theme.button_active, theme.button_focus)
        .with_border_radius(6.0);
    btn.set_on_click({
        let reqs = requests.clone();
        move || {
            let term = Terminal::new(Metrics::new(14.0, 18.0));
            reqs.lock().unwrap().push(WindowRequest {
                title: "BexaUI Terminal".into(),
                width: 900,
                height: 600,
                root: ui!(term),
                theme: Theme::ocean(),
            });
        }
    });

    let root = ui! {
        Container::new().with_padding(32.0) => {
            btn,
        }
    };

    App::new(root)
        .theme(theme)
        .title("Terminal Demo")
        .with_requests(requests)
        .run();
}

Architecture

BexaUI is organized as a Rust workspace with three crates:

bexa-ui/              # Facade crate — re-exports everything via prelude
bexa-ui-core/         # Widgets, layout, theme, signals, renderer commands
bexa-ui-render/       # wgpu rendering, glyphon text, event loop, multi-window

Rendering pipeline (4-pass per frame):

1. Main quad pass (SDF rounded rects with borders)
2. Main text pass (glyphon)
3. Overlay quad pass (dropdowns, tooltips)
4. Overlay text pass

Examples

# Basic hello world
cargo run -p bexa-ui-examples --example hello

# Dashboard with all widgets
cargo run -p bexa-ui-examples --example dashboard

# Checkbox, radio buttons, and select dropdown
cargo run -p bexa-ui-examples --example checkbox_radio

# Terminal in a new window
cargo run -p bexa-ui-examples --example terminal --features terminal

# Theme gallery
cargo run -p bexa-ui-examples --example theme_gallery

# Grid layout
cargo run -p bexa-ui-examples --example layout_grid

Dependencies

Roadmap

Done:

• Text input with clipboard
• Keyboard navigation
• Checkbox / Radio / Select
• Scrollbar
• Multi-window support
• Terminal widget (PTY + VT100)

Next:

• Table / DataGrid
• Slider widget
• Image widget
• Animations and transitions
• Accessibility (screen readers)
• Publish to crates.io
• CI/CD with GitHub Actions

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! BexaUI is especially looking for help with:

• Terminal emulation improvements (mouse support, 24-bit color, scrollback)
• New widgets (Table, Slider, Tree view)
• Testing and CI setup
• Documentation and examples

Feel free to open issues, submit pull requests, or suggest new features.

Support

If you find BexaUI useful and want to support its development:

License

MIT