dioxus-native-renderers

What this covers

The three rendering paths for Dioxus desktop/native apps: WebView (Wry), Blitz (dioxus-native), and Freya. Current status as of early 2026.

Path 1: WebView (Wry) -- Stable Default

Uses the OS webview (WebKit on macOS/Linux, WebView2 on Windows) via Wry/Tao (same stack as Tauri).

• Rust code runs natively in same process; webview only handles painting
• No IPC bridge needed for system access
• JS interop via eval for reaching into the webview
• Full CSS/JS support
• Production-ready

When to pick: need stability today, need full CSS/JS, acceptable browser runtime overhead.

Path 2: Blitz / dioxus-native -- Alpha (GPU-rendered)

Shipped as dioxus-native in Dioxus 0.7. Pre-alpha quality. "Do not recommend building production applications with it."

Repository: github.com/DioxusLabs/blitz (1,231+ workflow runs, active development)

Architecture

Layer	Library	Purpose
CSS parsing + resolution	Stylo (Firefox/Servo)	Full CSS engine, battle-tested
Box layout	Taffy	Flexbox + Grid
Text layout	Parley	Text shaping and layout
GPU rendering	Vello (via wgpu)	GPU compute renderer (Linebender)
HTML parsing	html5ever	Standard HTML parser
Windowing	Winit	Cross-platform windows
Accessibility	AccessKit	Native a11y integration

Crate structure

• blitz-dom -- core DOM with style resolution, layout, event handling
• blitz-html -- HTML/XHTML parsing
• blitz-paint -- DOM to drawing commands
• blitz-renderer-vello -- concrete Vello+wgpu renderer
• blitz-shell -- window/rendering integration
• blitz-net -- resource fetching
• dioxus-native -- wraps everything for Dioxus VirtualDOM

What works

• Complex website layouts "indistinguishable from Chrome and Safari"
• Flexbox, Grid, table, block, inline, absolute/fixed positioning
• Complex CSS selectors, media queries, CSS variables
• Basic <form> support
• AccessKit accessibility
• Hover styling, animations
• Custom widget support
• Named grid sections

What doesn't work yet

• Not every CSS feature (check blitz.is/status/css for matrix)
• Writing direction bugs
• Missing many event types (mouseover, some form events)
• Missing widget types (some input types, iframe)
• Pages requiring JavaScript don't render
• Performance not yet focused on
• No WebRTC, WebSockets, localStorage (use Rust crates directly)
• Crashes on Windows (#4901), SIGSEGV on window close (#5128), blank on NixOS (#5133)
• Checkbox reactivity broken (#5282)

Binary size

~12MB

Release timeline

• Dioxus 0.6: Blitz not yet integrated
• Dioxus 0.7: shipped as dioxus-native, alpha
• Dioxus 0.8: continued investment toward production-ready

Path 3: Freya -- Community (CPU-rendered via tiny-skia)

Repository: github.com/marc2332/freya -- 2.6k stars, 103 forks

Critical change: Freya v0.4 drops Dioxus entirely

• v0.1-v0.3: used Dioxus VirtualDOM, RSX macro, hooks, reactivity
• v0.4 (in development, PR #1351): own reactive core, no more rsx!(), own component model
• Removed from Dioxus README in January 2026
• Now a separate GUI framework, not "the Skia renderer for Dioxus"

Rendering

Uses tiny-skia (not full Skia):

• CPU-only, no GPU rendering
• Pure Rust, ~14 KLOC, compiles in <5s, adds ~200KB to binary
• 20-100% slower than real Skia on x86-64, 100-300% slower on ARM
• Still faster than cairo and raqote
• Runs on Raspberry Pi
• Perf tip: RUSTFLAGS="-Ctarget-cpu=haswell" for AVX on x86

Elements and components

Own element set (not HTML):

• rect (container, analogous to div), label (text)
• Built-in components: Button, Switch, Slider, Checkbox, Input, Link, ScrollView, VirtualScrollView, Accordion, Tabs, Table, Calendar, ColorPicker, Dropdown

Maturity

• Single primary maintainer (Marc Espin)
• v0.3 stable on crates.io, v0.4 is a breaking rewrite
• "Basically usable if you don't mind living on the bleeding edge and putting up with some jank" (2025 survey)
• No third-party ecosystem

Comparison Table

	Freya	Blitz/dioxus-native	WebView (Wry)
Status	v0.3 stable, v0.4 rewrite	Alpha (Dioxus 0.7)	Production-ready
Rendering	CPU (tiny-skia)	GPU (Vello/wgpu)	System webview
Backing	Solo maintainer	DioxusLabs org	Tauri team
CSS support	N/A (own elements)	Partial (Stylo, growing)	Full
Component lib	~15 built-in	HTML elements + CSS	Entire web ecosystem
Accessibility	Limited	AccessKit	Native webview a11y
Ecosystem	None beyond built-in	Early	Massive
Binary size	Small (~200KB added)	~12MB	Depends on platform webview

When to pick each

Freya: non-HTML component model, constrained hardware, small dependency tree, willing to track single maintainer. Note: no longer Dioxus-compatible as of v0.4.

Blitz/dioxus-native: HTML/CSS knowledge, want official Dioxus path, need GPU rendering, need accessibility, want web+native from same codebase. Accept alpha-quality crashes.

WebView (Wry): production stability today, full CSS/JS, massive web ecosystem, acceptable browser overhead.