WebView

WebView embeds a real operating-system web view inside a gpui window — WKWebView on macOS, WebView2 on Windows, WebKitGTK on Linux — using wry. The native view is parented to the gpui window and repositioned every frame to track the component's layout bounds, so it sits inside normal guise layout like any other element.

It is a stateful entity (Render + EventEmitter). Create it with cx.new and subscribe for [WebViewEvent]s.

use guise::prelude::*;

let view = cx.new(|cx| {
    WebView::new(cx)
        .url("https://example.com")
        .height(360.0)
});

cx.subscribe(&view, |_this, _view, event: &WebViewEvent, _cx| {
    match event {
        WebViewEvent::TitleChanged(title) => println!("title: {title}"),
        WebViewEvent::UrlChanged(url)     => println!("→ {url}"),
        WebViewEvent::LoadStarted         => {}
        WebViewEvent::LoadFinished        => {}
    }
})
.detach();

Render the entity wherever you want the page to appear:

Stack::new().child(view.clone())

#Inline HTML

WebView::new(cx).html("<h1>Hello from wry</h1>")

#Driving it at runtime

Because the parent holds an Entity<WebView>, navigate it after creation with update:

self.view.update(cx, |wv, cx| wv.load_url("https://docs.rs", cx));
self.view.update(cx, |wv, cx| wv.load_html("<p>offline</p>", cx));
wv.evaluate_script("document.body.style.zoom = '1.25'");

#Builder methods

#Runtime methods

#Events

WebViewEvent is emitted as the page changes:

• TitleChanged(SharedString) — the document title updated.
• UrlChanged(SharedString) — the view navigated.
• LoadStarted / LoadFinished — page load lifecycle.

Handler callbacks from the native view are marshalled back onto the entity by a small drain loop, so you always receive them inside the normal gpui update cycle (safe to call cx.emit / mutate state).

#The webview feature

The native backend lives behind the default-on webview Cargo feature, which pulls in wry. Two things to know:

• Linux needs the system WebKitGTK dev libraries at build time (libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev on Debian/Ubuntu).

• For headless or docs-only builds, disable it:

  Copy

  guise-ui = { version = "0.2", default-features = false }
  

  With the feature off, WebView still exists and keeps the exact same API, but renders a themed placeholder instead of a live page — so code that constructs and subscribes to it keeps compiling.

#Notes & limitations

• The native view paints above gpui content in its rectangle; gpui elements drawn over the same region won't show through it. Treat it as an opaque pane.
• It is created lazily on the first frame that has a window handle, so a brand new WebView has no live page for one frame.
• One native view per WebView entity; dropping the entity tears the view down.