ryanmcgrath/cacao

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

2077 stars · 82 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

Cacao provides safe Rust bindings for Apple's AppKit (macOS) and UIKit (iOS/tvOS) frameworks, wrapping the Objective-C runtime in a Rust-friendly API. It lets developers build native Apple-platform applications in Rust with familiar AppDelegate-style patterns.

Use cases

• build a native macOS app in Rust
• write an iOS app using Rust instead of Swift
• create cross-platform Apple apps sharing Rust code
• wrap AppKit windows and controls from Rust
• build a tvOS application in Rust

When to choose

• you want native Apple UI toolkits from Rust rather than a web-based or game-engine UI
• you're comfortable with beta-quality software and some rough edges
• you know AppKit/UIKit concepts from Swift or Objective-C and want a familiar API

When to avoid

• you need production-grade stability and long-term support guarantees
• you need cross-platform GUI beyond Apple platforms (Windows/Linux)
• you're uncomfortable with crates that rely heavily on unsafe under the hood

Facets

library · maturity experimental

gui ui-components sdk cross-platform apple-ecosystem developer-tools rust appkit uikit cocoa-bindings native-ui tvos macos ios desktop mobile

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markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="ryanmcgrath/cacao")