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:
- .NET
- Flutter
- Ionic
- Unity
- React Native
- Apache Cordova
- Qt
- Appcelerator Titanium
.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.
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.
Ionic
Ionic is a mobile app 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 for
The framework uses JavaScript.
It is free and open-source (FOSS). It is developed by company Drifty.
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#.
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.
Apache Cordova
Apache Cordova, also known as PhoneGap, is a development framework for mobile phones based on web technologies.
It is free and open source (FOSS), under an Apache License 2.0.
Qt
The framework uses C++.
It is free and open source (FOSS), under a GPLv2, GPLv3 and LGPL licenses.
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.
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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