# Kivy

5 Hacker News commenters recommended Kivy and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free Python framework for building cross-platform apps; people praise its friendly community, though iOS builds and general limitations draw criticism.

## Why people recommend it

- Enables cross-platform app development (1 comments): "Special thanks to the Kivy Community for enabling cross-platform development." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47562649))
- Friendly, helpful contributors (1 comments): "Kivy is great, and the contributors are friendlier than most." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49749208))
- Gets the job done (1 comments): "It was a little clunky, but it got the job done." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49749544))
- Used directly with Termux (1 comments): "A better option iirc is to use something like kivy directly with termux" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47941852))

## What people warn about

- Clunky and painful to use (2 comments): "It was a little clunky, but it got the job done." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49749544)) "I tried using Kivy some years ago and also found it pretty painful" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49749307))
- Build issues, especially on iOS (2 comments): "compiling for iOS is just a bit of a moving target" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49756558)) "too many limitations and build issues in practice" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49748409))

## 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, "Kivy", https://hackerapproved.com/p/kivy/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).