Building GUI Applications with Fyne and Go (Golang)

Name: Building GUI Applications with Fyne and Go (Golang)
Rating: 4.7 (343 reviews)

Learn how to build fast, efficient desktop applications for Mac, Windows and Linux using Go and Fyne.

Created byTrevor Sawler

Last updated 5/2026

English

What you'll learn

Learn how to build GUI applications using Go and Fyne
Learn how to have your application display common widgets
Learn how to save your application state with an embedded database
Learn how to have your application call resources on the internet

Course content

7 sections • 70 lectures • 6h 6m total length

Introduction6:19
About me1:01
Installing Go1:31
Installing Visual Studio Code3:14
Installing Make1:27
Asking for help1:14
Mistakes. We all make them.1:06

What we'll cover in this section1:32
Getting started with the MarkDown editor13:05
Adding a Main Menu to our Application4:23
Making Menu Items Functional: Saving files11:55
Opening files6:07
Adding a filter to the open file command4:44
Making the Save menu item functional3:51
Packaging our application3:52
Package your fyne-based go app into a native binary. Install fyne, add an icon, set version and name, and build a distributable Mac or Windows app.
Writing a simple test for our application7:30
Defining a custom theme3:20

What we'll cover in this section3:01
Setting up a simple application7:25
Getting started on the user interface6:05
Heads up: Goldprice now requires browser-like headers0:49
Getting the current price of gold from an external site11:46
Writing tests for our gold prices logic10:44
Creating and returning the prices container10:29
Displaying prices in our application window3:26
Writing a test for the getPriceText function10:03
Creating a toolbar4:35
Writing a test for the toolbar3:14
Adding application tabs4:33
Heads up: the chart image download needs the same browser-like headers1:03
Getting the Gold Price Chart6:52
Creating and returning the priceChart container4:43
Handling the situation when no network is available3:30
Displaying the chart in our application window3:00
Writing a function that will refresh all Gold price information3:37
Enabling the refresh icon in the toolbar1:52
Updating gold prices in the background2:49

What we'll cover in this section1:04
Getting started with the holdings tab7:08
Getting the slice of holdings and testing our currentHoldings function and9:46
Testing our getHoldingSlice function1:41
Building the table widget11:25
Getting the information we need in order to refresh the holdings table3:12
Creating the refreshHoldingsTable function2:08
Displaying the holdings table in our application (finally!)2:48
Manually entering some data into sqlite6:12
Changing the container type for our holdings table4:39
Fixing a problem with the delete button4:42
Enabling the add holdings button in the toolbar10:09
Adding validation to our add holdings dialog7:57
Fixing a problem with the way prices display, and writing a simple test6:38
Installing a Makefile0:19
Adding an icon, and building an executable2:56
Setting up preferences for our application2:55
Enabling the preferences icon in the toolbar8:55

Requirements

Familiarity with the Go programming language
Mac or Windows computer and an Internet connection

Description

Many developers are intimidated by the idea of writing a desktop application, and this is probably because of the rise of web based applications. In fact, some university computer science programs do not even devote an entire course to developing GUI applications, and that's unfortunate.

Go, sometimes referred as Golang, has quickly risen in popularity over the past decade, and has become extremely popular for building REST APIs, back end applications, and network software. One question that comes up a great deal online, though, is how one might go about building a desktop application using Go. For quite some time, the default answer was use Qt and CGO bindings, but several years ago a new project emerged -- one that makes it relatively easy to build GUI applications in pure Go: the Fyne project. Fyne is a project is based around the premise that it should be free and simple to develop an application that can run on all platforms without modification or adaptation. Fyne apps are installed like regular applications on all platforms and deliver great performance and solid user experience.

With Fyne, you can write your code once, in pure Go, and deliver applications that run on Mac OSX, Windows, Linux, Android devices, iOS devices, and as WebAssembly in the browser.

This course is intended to cover the basics of building a GUI application in pure Go. We will cover:

Building Desktop applications: we'll build two: a MarkDown editor and an application that allows users to track (fictional) Gold investments and get real-time information on Gold prices.

We will cover:

How to work with the Fyne Canvas
How to work with Fyne Windows
How to use (and customize) Widgets, including dialogs, text, labels, input fields, forms, and tables
How to validate user input
How to fetch external resources from remote servers and use them in our application
How to use containers to arrange things in a window
How to embed a sqlite database into a desktop application
How to build custom menu items and link them to actions
How to read and write files from your application
How to read and write preferences
How to bundle assets (e.g. images) into a Fyne application
How to build a single binary with a custom icon
How to sign a Mac OS X application for distribution

Who this course is for:

Developers who know Go, and want to learn how to build a GUI application

Building GUI Applications with Fyne and Go (Golang)

What you'll learn

Explore related topics

Course content

Introduction7 lectures • 16min

Getting Started with Fyne4 lectures • 21min

First Project: Building a Markdown Editor10 lectures • 1hr

Second Project: GoldWatcher20 lectures • 1hr 44min

Second Project: Part II, Connecting to a database8 lectures • 59min

Second Project: Part III, populating the holdings tab18 lectures • 1hr 35min

For Mac users: Signing our Application through Apple3 lectures • 12min

Requirements

Description

Who this course is for: