What is zero-native?

zero-native is a framework for building native desktop and mobile apps that combine rich web UI with genuine native controls. Instead of shipping a full browser bundled with your app (like Electron does), it uses the operating system's built-in web rendering engine, keeping your app small and fast to launch. The core idea is a hybrid approach: you build your main product interface using familiar web tools like React, Next.js, Svelte, or Vue, but that web content lives inside a native shell. That shell gives you real platform windows, menus, toolbars, sidebars, and dialogs controlled by a layer written in Zig, a systems programming language. You can also choose to bundle Chromium if you need perfectly consistent rendering across platforms. Security is a key focus, the web layer is treated as untrusted by default, and any communication between the web UI and native system features is explicitly permission-controlled. This is aimed at developers and teams who want to ship lightweight desktop or mobile apps without abandoning their existing web development workflow. For example, if you're a startup founder building a note-taking app or a design tool, you could keep your polished React interface while adding native menus, system tray integration, clipboard access, and file handling, things that are difficult or clunky with a standard web app. The included examples show patterns like building a native toolbar around web content or wiring up native keyboard shortcuts. The project is still in pre-release but already supports macOS, Linux, and Windows, with mobile examples for iOS and Android. What stands out is the performance tradeoff: by using Zig for the native layer, rebuilds are nearly instant, and by relying on system web engines, the resulting app binaries stay tiny. If you later find you need rendering guarantees, you can switch to the bundled Chromium option without rewriting your app.