Where it paints

Every surface a go-widgets tree can be shown on, and what chooses between them.

Surface	Module	Painter
A native window on X11, Wayland, macOS, Windows	`window`	pixels
An application with a tray icon and the system appearance	`application`, `tray`	pixels
A browser tab: a plain `<canvas>`	`webcanvas`, or `window`	pixels
A browser desktop: a window of the wasmdesk compositor	`window` (wasmbox)	pixels
A terminal	`tui`	cells
An Android APK	`android`, `window`	pixels
A picture: SVG or PNG	`svg`	pixels

The widget tree does not change between them. What changes is who owns the buffer and who delivers input — a display server, a browser, a terminal, a Java host — and each back-end turns that input into the same toolkit.Event.

Chosen by what is there

window.Open takes no back-end argument. It looks at the environment — the platform it was built for, $WAYLAND_DISPLAY, $DISPLAY, the socket an Android host exports — and picks the one that can work. A binary built for Linux opens a Wayland window under a Wayland session and an X11 window under X; the same Android binary dials its host inside an APK and opens an ordinary Linux window under Termux. See how Open chooses.

Created on October 9, 2026 by tannevaled

Modified on October 11, 2026 by tannevaled