Is it possible to make desktop GUI application in .NET Core?

Question

I have been developing Windows Forms programs for few years. I am now looking into .NET Core (including ASP.NET Core MVC). I am searching for the new GUI desktop technology.

Answer 1

It is now possible to use Qt, QtQuick, and QML with .NET Core, using Qml.Net.

It is highly performant (not "P/Invoke chatty"), fully featured and works across Linux, OS X, and Windows.

Check out my blog post to see how it compares to the other options out there currently.

PS: I'm the author.

Answer 2

For creating a console-based UI, you can use gui.cs. It is open-source (from Miguel de Icaza, creator of Xamarin), and runs on .NET Core on Windows, Linux, and macOS.

It has the following components:

• Buttons
• Labels
• Text entry
• Text view
• Time editing field
• Radio buttons
• Checkboxes
• Dialog boxes
  • Message boxes
• Windows
• Menus
• ListViews
• Frames
• ProgressBars
• Scroll views and Scrollbars
• Hexadecimal viewer/editor (HexView)

Sample screenshot

Answer 3

Windows Forms (and its visual designer) have been available for .NET Core (as a preview) since Visual Studio 2019 16.6. It's quite good, although sometimes I need to open Visual Studio 2019 16.7 Preview to get around annoying bugs.

See this blog post: Windows Forms Designer for .NET Core Released

Also, Windows Forms is now open source: https://github.com/dotnet/winforms