# Dear ImGui

45 Hacker News commenters recommended Dear ImGui and 12 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Fast, lightweight, cross-platform immediate-mode GUI library for tools, prototypes and debug UIs. Critics say it is not meant for end-user applications.

## Why people recommend it

- Standard for prototyping graphical tools (5 comments): "Dear ImGui is designed to enable fast iterations and to empower programmers to create content creation tools" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48578630)) "Use an inmediate gui interface like dear imgui to prototype your tool." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47028217)) "basically standard when prototyping any sort of graphical application" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47291533))
- Bindings for many languages (4 comments): "It also have bindings for a ton of languages, so for people who jump languages a lot, it's always nice to be able to reach for something more familiar" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46111461)) "Dear ImGui via the C bindings is actually quite nice and not much less convenient than the C++ API" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47505233)) "I find it easier to use Dear Imgui from a "lower-level language"" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46672568))
- Stable and reliable in use (3 comments): "Imgui is a rare mix of fast, lightweight, trivially cross-platform and stable" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46115013)) "is being used productively by many people and is stable" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50071379)) "ImGui is reliable and Zig makes it trivial to use." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48399258))
- Fast, lightweight and easy to deploy (3 comments): "trivial to deploy (there is nothing to deploy, including it is all that's needed)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47178439)) "Imgui is a rare mix of fast, lightweight, trivially cross-platform and stable" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46115013)) "the latter being as simple as can be while still being blazing fast" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45820829))

## What people warn about

- Not meant for end-user apps (4 comments): "it's not meant to be used in actual applications aimed at end-users" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46110004)) "Any project that uses Dear Imgui for end-user applications has already made a bad design choice." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48572734)) "Using it for local desktop app UI is also ridiculous, imho." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48092840))
- Too low level for general UIs (3 comments): "For the intended use case it is quite good, but for more general applications it is just not a good UI library." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46120237)) "It supports most of the fancy layout stuff of CSS afaik (flexbox etc), yet its almost as low level as it gets." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46659335)) "I felt it was very low level and had to build a lot of systems" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49903860))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Qt](https://hackerapproved.com/p/qt.md): 191 recommend
- [GTK](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gtk.md): 85 recommend
- [Windows Forms](https://hackerapproved.com/p/winforms.md): 76 recommend
- [SwiftUI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/swiftui.md): 75 recommend
- [Tcl/Tk](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tcl-tk.md): 61 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Dear ImGui", https://hackerapproved.com/p/dear-imgui/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).