Before It Existed
Wails was created by Lea Anthony, an Australian software developer, in 2019. He built it because he wanted Electron-like developer experience but with Go as the backend language. The early versions were experimental, but the project found a passionate community among Go developers who wanted to build desktop apps without learning Rust or dealing with Electron's overhead. Wails v2 was a complete rewrite released in 2022, introducing proper native webview support, a new binding system, and a much-improved developer experience. The project is community-funded through GitHub Sponsors and has grown to thousands of GitHub stars.
What Makes It Different
Wails automatically generates TypeScript type definitions from your Go structs and functions. When you define a Go struct with specific fields, Wails creates a corresponding TypeScript model that your frontend code can import. This means type safety extends across the entire application boundary, from Go backend to TypeScript frontend, without any manual synchronization.
The project's name is a play on words: "Wails" sounds like "Wales" (the country), reflecting Lea Anthony's connection to the UK, but it is also meant to evoke the sound of "web" plus "Rails."
Visit: wails.io