Windows

This page has miscellaneous guides related to developing Wails applications for Windows.

Handling the WebView2 Runtime Dependency

Wails applications built for Windows have a runtime requirement on the Microsoft WebView2 Runtime. Windows 11 will have this installed by default, but some machines won't. Wails offers an easy approach to dealing with this dependency.

By using the -webview2 flag when building, you can decide what your application will do when a suitable runtime is not detected (including if the installed runtime is too old). The four options are:

1. Download
2. Embed
3. Browser
4. Error

Download

This option will prompt the user that no suitable runtime has been found and then offer to download and run the official bootstrapper from Microsoft's WebView2 site. If the user proceeds, the official bootstrapper will be downloaded and run.

Embed

This option embeds the official bootstrapper within the application. If no suitable runtime has been found, the application will offer to run the bootstrapper. This adds ~150k to the binary size.

Browser

This option will prompt the user that no suitable runtime has been found and then offer to open a browser to the official WebView2 page where the bootstrapper can be downloaded and installed. The application will then exit, leaving the installation up to the user.

Error

If no suitable runtime is found, an error is given to the user and no further action taken.

Fixed version runtime

Another way of dealing with webview2 dependency is shipping it yourself. You can download fixed version runtime and bundle or download it with your application.

Also, you should specify path to fixed version of webview2 runtime in the windows.Options structure when launching wails.

    wails.Run(&options.App{
        Windows: &windows.Options{
            WebviewBrowserPath:  "",
        },
    })

Note: When WebviewBrowserPath is specified, error strategy will be forced in case of minimal required version mismatch or invalid path to a runtime.

The downloaded file will be compressed (extension .cab), so you must extract it before using it, according to the instructions on the official site should run in a terminal the following command to extract the file:

expand {path to the package} -F:* {path to the destination folder}

Spawning other programs

When spawning other programs, such as scripts, you will see the window appear on the screen. To hide the window, you can use the following code:

cmd := exec.Command("your_script.exe")
cmd.SysProcAttr = &syscall.SysProcAttr{
    HideWindow:    true,
    CreationFlags: 0x08000000,
}
cmd.Start()

Solution provided by sithembiso on the discussions board.