Files
netbird/client/ui-wails
Zoltán Papp 8b8f38de1b [client/ui-wails] Show GUI and daemon versions in the About submenu
Restore the legacy Fyne UI's two disabled "GUI: x.y.z" / "Daemon: a.b.c"
entries under About so users (and support) can read the running
versions from the tray. The GUI line is baked in at build time via
version.NetbirdVersion() — the same -ldflags chain the rest of the
repo uses. The daemon line starts as "—" and is rewritten in
applyStatus on every Status snapshot whose DaemonVersion differs from
the last one we recorded, so a daemon restart with a new build
(e.g. after an enforced update) updates the menu automatically.

Drive-by: rename the local variable that shadowed the version package
in handleUpdate so the import resolves cleanly.
2026-05-06 16:55:52 +02:00
..

NetBird desktop UI (Wails3 + React)

Replaces client/ui (Fyne). One binary on Windows / macOS / Linux, talks to the NetBird daemon over gRPC, renders a React frontend in a WebView.

Prerequisites

  • Go ≥ 1.25, Node ≥ 20, pnpm (corepack enable && corepack prepare pnpm@latest --activate)
  • wails3 CLI: go install github.com/wailsapp/wails/v3/cmd/wails3@latest
  • task: go install github.com/go-task/task/v3/cmd/task@latest
  • A running NetBird daemon (default: unix:///var/run/netbird.sock, Windows tcp://127.0.0.1:41731)
  • Linux only: libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev, libgtk-3-dev, libayatana-appindicator3-dev

Develop without rebuilding

cd client/ui-wails
task dev

task dev runs Vite (port 9245) + the Go binary + a *.go watcher. Frontend edits hot-reload instantly. Go edits trigger a rebuild and relaunch. Pass daemon flags after --:

task dev -- --daemon-addr=tcp://127.0.0.1:41731

For pure UI work (no native window, fastest loop):

cd frontend && pnpm dev

Production build

task build

Output in bin/. Frontend assets are embedded into the binary.

Cross-compile Windows from Linux

Install the mingw-w64 toolchain once:

sudo apt install gcc-mingw-w64-x86-64           # Debian/Ubuntu
sudo dnf install mingw64-gcc                    # Fedora
sudo pacman -S mingw-w64-gcc                    # Arch

Then:

CGO_ENABLED=1 task windows:build

Produces bin/netbird-ui.exe. macOS cross-compile from Linux is not supported (signing and notarization need a real Mac).

Windows console build (logs in the terminal)

Default windows:build links the binary as a Windows GUI app, which detaches from the launching console — logrus output, fmt.Println, and panics go nowhere visible. To debug tray/event/daemon issues:

CGO_ENABLED=1 task windows:build:console

Produces bin/netbird-ui-console.exe. Run it from cmd.exe / PowerShell / Windows Terminal and stdout/stderr land in that terminal. Same flag works on a native Windows build (drop the CGO_ENABLED=1 if your toolchain already has it set).

Regenerating bindings

When a Go service signature changes:

wails3 generate bindings

task dev does this automatically on *.go save.

Tray icons

Source SVGs live in assets/svg/ (state.svg + state-macos.svg). After editing any SVG, rasterize to the PNGs the Go side embeds:

task common:generate:tray:icons

Requires Inkscape. Commit the resulting assets/*.png files alongside the SVG change so CI doesn't need Inkscape installed.