GTK icon
GTK icon

GTK

 55 likes

GTK is a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. Offering a complete set of widgets, GTK is suitable for projects ranging from small one-off tools to complete application suites.

GTK screenshot 1

License model

  • Free • Open Source

Application type

Country of Origin

  • US flagUnited States

Platforms

  • Mac
  • Windows
  • Linux
  • Chrome OS
GTK screenshot 1
GTK screenshot 2
+1
GTK screenshot 3
GTK alternatives  
4.7 / 5 Avg rating (3)
55likes
1comment
36alternatives
2news articles

Features

Suggest and vote on features
  1.  Cross-Platform

 Tags

GTK News & Activities

Highlights All activities

Recent News

Show more news

Recent activities

  • braky updated GTK
    about 1 month ago
  • thejfex and PredatorQ liked GTK
    4 months ago
  • App icon
    ZorinFoss added GTK as alternative to Ribir
    7 months ago
  • App icon
    komp12321 added GTK as alternative to Kivy
    8 months ago
Show all activities

Comments and Reviews

   
 Post comment/review
Top Positive Comment
thorsummoner0
★
★
★
★
★
Jan 11, 2015
0

The GTK+ toolset does what a Graphical ToolKit needs to do and does it to the point and well.

Pros:

  • Common use case keyboard navigation works perfectly.
  • Common desktop gui software paradigms feel at home here.
  • Latest releases include great intricate debuggers
  • Current Stable releases allow for a large variety of CSS for styling.
  • First-Party documentation is terse and as such, easy to reference.
  • Based on a hilighy-bindable framework that provides the same GUI capability across every major programming & scripting language (even PHP, go figure)
  • Cross platform, Yes Window, Mac, and naturally Linux

Cons:

  • Scenario-specific documentation and help resources are thin, Often Google returns results for the last major version that are at best only semantically compatible with the latest version. I consider this an artifact of a relatively small user base.
  • GTK themes on OSX/Win only emulate native themes, and as such can be shipped with any theme desirable, Deluge on Windows is a good example of a GTK using an irregular theme.
  • Native GTK File select/save prompts do not feel native to any OS platform.
  • Large tables (TreeViews) perform poorly and do not have a native cache-optimization requiring manually created workarounds.

All in all, I'm in love with this stuff. I try really hard to use the latest major release which has not had 3rd party interest matured for it yet, leaving a lot of unknowns. I that is a problem, GTK2's 3rd party interest is absolutely mature and is ripe with one-off resources that can help particular use cases.

What is GTK?

Create apps that users just love. Offering a complete set of UI elements, GTK is suitable for projects ranging from small one-off tools to complete application suites.

Work with the language of your choice

Develop your GTK app with your language of choice by using Language Bindings or wrappers and take full advantage of the official GNOME bindings which guarantee API stability and time-based releases.

A feature-rich development tool. GTK has all the features that a widget toolkit needs to have. These features make it the most trusted toolkit for developing Linux applications.

  • Portability: Projects built using GTK and its dependencies run on well known operating systems.
  • Stability: GTK delivers the enticing features and superb performance which adds to your applications.
  • Language Bindings: GTK is written in C but has been designed to support a wide range of languages such as Python, JavaScript, C++, Rust and many more.
  • Interfaces: GTK has a comprehensive collection of core widgets like Buttons, Windows, Toolbars for use in your application.
  • Open Source: GTK is a free and open-source project maintained by GNOME and an active community of contributors. GTK is released under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License.
  • API: GTK boasts of an easy to use API which helps in decreasing your development time and help you achieve better results.
  • Accommodation: GTK caters to many features like Native look and feel, theme support, Object-oriented approach that today’s developers look for in a toolkit.
  • Foundations: GTK is built on top of GLib. GLib provides the fundamental data types and system integration points to avoid duplicated code in applications.

Official Links

AppStores & Other Links

GTK information

  • Developed by

    US flagThe GNOME Project

  • Licensing

    Open Source (GPL-2.0) and Free product.

  • Rating

    Average rating of 4.7

  • Alternatives

    36 alternatives listed

  • Supported Languages

    • English

AlternativeTo Category

Development

Popular alternatives

View all

Top GTK apps (extensions / mods etc)

View all

Our users have written 1 comments and reviews about GTK, and it has gotten 55 likes

GTK was added to AlternativeTo by Thelle Christensen on May 19, 2012 and this page was last updated Jun 12, 2025.