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The auto-update feature was driven by two narrow Wails events (netbird:update:available and :progress) plus a SystemEvent-metadata iteration on the React side. Both surfaces had to know the daemon metadata schema (new_version_available, enforced, progress_window), and the frontend had no pull endpoint to seed its state on mount. Extract the state machine into a new client/ui/updater package, mirroring how i18n and preferences are split between domain logic and a thin services facade. The package owns the State type, the metadata-key parsing, the mutex-guarded Holder, and the single netbird:update:state event. services.Update keeps the daemon RPCs (Trigger, GetInstallerResult, Quit) and gains GetState as a Wails pull endpoint. Tray-side update behaviour moves out of tray.go into a dedicated trayUpdater (tray_update.go): owns its menu item, OS notification, click handler, and the /update window opener triggered by the daemon's progress_window:show. tray.go drops three callbacks and four fields, and reads hasUpdate through the updater. Frontend ClientVersionContext now seeds from Update.GetState() and subscribes to netbird:update:state; the status.events iteration and metadata-key string literals are gone. UpdateAvailableBanner renders only for the enforced && !installing branch and labels its action "Install now"; UpdateVersionCard splits the install vs. download branches by Enforced so the disabled flow routes to GitHub.
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) wails3CLI:go install github.com/wailsapp/wails/v3/cmd/wails3@latesttask:go install github.com/go-task/task/v3/cmd/task@latest- A running NetBird daemon (default:
unix:///var/run/netbird.sock, Windowstcp://127.0.0.1:41731) - Linux only:
libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev,libgtk-3-dev,libayatana-appindicator3-dev
Develop without rebuilding
cd client/ui
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.