Skip to content
Wails Blog

Runtime

The Wails runtime is the standard library for Wails applications. It provides a number of features that may be used in your applications, including:

  • Window management
  • Dialogs
  • Browser integration
  • Clipboard
  • Menus
  • System information
  • Events
  • Context Menus
  • Screens
  • WML (Wails Markup Language)

The runtime is required for integration between Go and the frontend. There are 2 ways to integrate the runtime:

  • Using the @wailsio/runtime package
  • Using a pre-built bundle

Using the npm package

The @wailsio/runtime package is a JavaScript package that provides access to the Wails runtime from the frontend. It is used by all standard templates and is the recommended way to integrate the runtime into your application. By using the @wailsio/runtime package, you will only include the parts of the runtime that you use.

The package is available on npm and can be installed using:

Terminal window
npm install --save @wailsio/runtime

Using a pre-built bundle

Some projects will not use a Javascript bundler and may prefer to use a pre-built bundled version of the runtime. This version can be generated locally using the following command:

Terminal window
wails3 generate runtime

The command will output a runtime.js (and runtime.debug.js) file in the current directory. This file is an ES module that can be imported by your application scripts just like the npm package, but the API is also exported to the global window object, so for simpler applications you can use it as follows:

<html>
    <head>
        <script type="module" src="./runtime.js"></script>
        <script>
            window.onload = function () {
                wails.Window.SetTitle("A new window title");
            }
        </script>
    </head>
    <!--- ... -->
</html>

Initialisation

Apart from the API functions, the runtime provides support for context menus and window dragging. These features will only work as expected after the runtime has been initialised. Even if you don’t use the API, make sure to include a side-effect import statement somewhere in your frontend code:

import "@wailsio/runtime";

Your bundler should detect the presence of side-effects and include all required initialisation code in the build.