# Xilem

9 Hacker News commenters recommended Xilem and 8 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 2 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** An experimental Rust UI framework that people recommend for its modular, renderer-agnostic design, with the caveat that many standard widgets are still missing.

## Why people recommend it

- Modular, renderer-agnostic design (3 comments): "The way Vello/Parley/Masonry/Xilem are split projects is partially what got me interested in it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47689984)) "Xilem and others are doing a good job of making a lot of things modular" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48544619)) "the master branch of Xilem and Masonry is somewhat renderer-agnostic" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47738889))

## What people warn about

- Many standard widgets not implemented (2 comments): "Xilem is less mature in comparison. Many standard UI components, such as selection box, are not implemented yet." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47683610)) "Xilem needs more widgets out of the box to be easy to build with." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47684519))

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