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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 version of the runtime

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 in by all the 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 local version of the runtime

Some projects will not use a Javascript bundler and may prefer to use a pre-built version of the runtime. This is the default for the examples in v3/examples. The pre-built version of the runtime can be generated using the following command:

Terminal window
wails3 generate runtime

This will generate a runtime.js (and runtime.debug.js) file in the current directory. This file can be used by your application by adding it to your frontend project:

<html>
    <head>
        <script src="./runtime.js"></script>
    </head>
    <!--- ... -->
</>