Files
netbird/client/ui-wails
Zoltán Papp df58935cc0 [client/ui-wails] Set NetBird window and app icon on Linux
Wails3 falls back to its bundled bird logo when no Icon is supplied via
application.Options or LinuxWindow. Embed the 256x256 NetBird PNG and
wire it through both fields, plus set ProgramName=netbird so GTK's
g_set_prgname picks up the icon from the installed .desktop file. Tested
on Fedora 40 + KDE Plasma; the titlebar and taskbar now show the NetBird
logo.
2026-05-04 14:34:45 +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.