GLFW
The most recommended of 4 windowing libraries
Small, focused library people use to open windows and handle input for OpenGL and games across platforms. Common caveat: weak Wayland support and no recent active maintainers.
Small, focused library people use to open windows and handle input for OpenGL and games across platforms. Common caveat: weak Wayland support and no recent active maintainers.
11 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 82%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 4.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Saves writing cross-platform windowing code
“Writing 1300 lines of non-cross-platform windowing code sounds like masochism.”
Comment from 22 Mar 2026 in “I Hate: Programming Wayland Applications” “glfw is smaller and more focused”
Comment from 29 Sep 2026 in “Tcl/Tk 9.1” Standard choice in game development
“I do game development so I'm most familiar with the ones commonly used in game engines”
Comment from 31 Mar 2026 in “Axios Compromised on NPM – Malicious Versions Drop Remote Access Trojan” “Generally yes (or GLFW, or SDL)”
Comment from 22 Mar 2026 in “I Hate: Programming Wayland Applications”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Weak Wayland support
“GLFW has had no active maintainers for a couple years and has poor support for Wayland”
Comment from 20 Jul 2026 in “Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3” “they all have to work around missing Wayland features”
Comment from 23 Mar 2026 in “MAUI Is Coming to Linux”
Other windowing libraries people recommend
The three most recommended other windowing libraries, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 4 windowing libraries, rankedWhat people said
9 of the 12 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“glfw is smaller and more focused”
“GLFW has had no active maintainers for a couple years and has poor support for Wayland”
“Afaik GLFW does not support this.”
“GLFW 3.4 has always just worked under Wayland for me.”
“I'm surprised Minecraft used GLFW all this time”
“I do game development so I'm most familiar with the ones commonly used in game engines”
“they all have to work around missing Wayland features”
“Generally yes (or GLFW, or SDL)”
“Writing 1300 lines of non-cross-platform windowing code sounds like masochism.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.