Cross-platform Application Frameworks

This post lists some cross-platform application frameworks for desktop and mobile applications.

List of cross-platform application frameworks

Cross-platform application frameworks featured on this post:

  • Flutter
  • Tauri
  • React Native
  • Ionic
  • Qt
  • Appcelerator Titanium
  • .NET
  • Unity

Flutter

Flutter is used to develop cross platform applications for Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, Windows, Google Fuchsia and the web.

It was originally focused on mobile OSs, and then expanded to desktop OS. Flutter for Web allows compatibility with web, and is the less mature of all compatibilities.

It is developed by Google and other communities.

Flutter uses the Dart programming language.

Official web

Flutter at Wikipedia

Tauri

Tauri is a framework that alows to create cross-platform desktop and mobile applications.

It writes uses JavaScript for front-end and Rust for back-end.

React Native

React Native is a framework to develop cross-platform mobile apps that work on both Android and iOS OSs.

React Native apps are based on JavaScript programming language.

It is free and open source (FOSS), under an MIT license.

Do not confuse the React Native cross-platform mobile framework with the React web front-end framework.

Official web

Ionic

Ionic is a mobile app UI framework for mobile OS.

It allows to use web front end frameworks (initially only AngularJS and Apache Cordova, but then extended to others like Angular, React or Vue.js) to create portable interfaces.

The framework uses JavaScript.

It is free and open-source (FOSS). It is developed by company Drifty.

Official web

Ionic at Wikipedia

Qt

The framework uses C++.

It is free and open source (FOSS), under a GPLv2, GPLv3 and LGPL licenses.

Official web

Appcelerator Titanium

Since 2021, the project is supported by the community. Before, the French company Axway maintained it until it discontinued the project and made the source code available at GitHub.

Official web

.NET

CLI or .NET implementations allow to create cross-platform apps from different programming languages.

Popular .NET implementations are .NET (formerly known as .NET Core) and Xamarin family of implementations (Mono, Xamarin.macOS, Xamarin.Android and Xamarin.iOS).

CLI was defined by Microsoft, and .NET implementations .NET Core and Xamarin are also developed by Microsoft.

To get a deeper understanding of .NET frameworks, you can check this post.

Official web

Unity

Unity is a cross-platform game engine framework for computer, consoles and video-games.

It is developed by Unity, a company based in the USA.

The framework uses C#.

Official web

Unity at Wikipedia

Cross-Platform Website Wrappers

Cross-platform website wrappers featured on this post:

  • Electron
  • Capacitor
  • Apache Cordova

Electron

Electron is a framework that allows to run a web as cross-platform desktop applications. It can be considered a website wrapper.

It is compatible with Linux, Windows and macOS.

To look to cross-platform mobile applications based on web, check Capacitor or Cordova.

Capacitor

Capacitor is a website wrapper that allows webs offers interaction with native phone features and enables to convert the webs into smartphone apps.

It is developed by the same team than Ionic.

Apache Cordova

Apache Cordova, also known as PhoneGap, is a development framework for mobile phones based on web technologies. It can be considered a website wrapper.

It was released in 2006.

It is free and open source (FOSS), under an Apache License 2.0.

Official web

Hybrid Application Framework

A hybrid application is one that can be run in a computer and a mobile phone.

  • Onsen UI
  • Adobe PhoneGap

Onsen UI

Onsen UI is FOSS.

Adobe PhoneGap

Adobe PhoneGap is FOSS.

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