GGggerganov·Dec 16, 2019
Thanks! FYI, underneath ImTui, it's 99% the Dear ImGui library [0] - ImTui is basically just a textual output wrapper.
[0] https://github.com/ocornut/imgui
In Show HN: HNTerm – Browse Hacker News in the Terminalocornut
imgui
C++2014–2026
ocornut / imgui
imgui
Dear ImGui: Bloat-free Graphical User interface for C++ with minimal dependencies
162Distinct people
209Mentions
4Explicit recommenders
77.1KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Dear ImGui: Bloat-free Graphical User interface for C++ with minimal dependencies
GitHub
Where it is used
- Ubisoft — Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege (internal/tools) — The article states Ubisoft adopted Dear ImGui and used it at Ubisoft (including Rainbow Six) to build internal production and debug/content-creation tools to enable fast iteration and visualization. Source
- Lizardcube — Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap (internal tooling) — The repository owner (ocornut) states that Lizardcube's shipped game Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap used Dear ImGui as its main internal tooling system for development and tooling. Source
What people are saying
I have done lots of UI interfaces in different platforms. I have used Motif and X Windows, Win32, MFC, Gtk, Qt, Cocoa, simple Web interfaces, DirectX, OpenGL, Metal. I love…
cracrecry used a recommendation phrase. 4 indexed comments match. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- emilk/egui · linked in 4 of the same discussions
- vurtun/nuklear · linked in 4 of the same discussions
- nothings/stb · linked in 3 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 6:36:16 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year209 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2014-08-11 02:10:27 UTC to 2026-09-03 10:20:38 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 4 | 2 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 1 | 6 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 8 | 1 | 7 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 12 | 2 | 10 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 23 | 3 | 20 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 29 | 7 | 22 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 29 | 2 | 27 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 14 | 0 | 14 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 24 | 1 | 23 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 28 | 4 | 24 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 13 | 2 | 11 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 15 | 1 | 14 |
What Hacker News says
23 sourcesThis is fun experiment I decided to try out - a simple C++ tool for creating immediate-mode textual user interfaces. It is basically an ncurses wrapper around Dear ImGui [0]. I thought it was interesting to share + probably with a bit of polishing it might even become useful :)
[0] https://github.com/ocornut/imgui
In Show HN: ImTui – Immediate Mode Text-Based User Interface Library for C++Oh, I see - although this is a relatively old issue on the imgui repo, seems like it's the bottom line (and expresses the same ideas mentioned here): https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/issues/1228#issuecomment-31...
In Moxie: Incremental Declarative UI in RustI like the ELM model for UI. The stateless/functional view approach is very similar to IMGUI [^1]. It makes things much less error prone with much less state management / hierarchy management to do than the React model.
[^1]: https://github.com/ocornut/imgui
In Moxie: Incremental Declarative UI in RustDo you mean Dear ImGui? Isn't it a C++ GUI?
https://github.com/ocornut/imgui
In Rust GUI ecosystem overviewDo I spy Dear Imgui used for one of the colormap control panels? Love using this for whipping together quick interfaces.
https://github.com/ocornut/imgui
In Turbo, an Improved Rainbow Colormap for VisualizationAs mentioned in comments elsewhere in the thread, there are several newer projects that are trying to fill that need for performant, cross-platform desktop app development.
* Revery (language: Reason) - https://www.outrunlabs.com/revery/
* WebView (language: C/C++/Golang) - https://github.com/zserge/webview
* Dear ImGui (bindings exist for many languages!) - https://github.com/ocornut/imgui
* Flutter (language: Dart) - https://flutter.dev/
None have really stood out yet to replace Electron, but the future seems bright.
In Electron 6.0An immediate mode GUI doesn't have to use immediate mode rendering. For example, the Dear ImGui library "outputs optimized vertex buffers that you can render anytime in your 3D-pipeline enabled application." [0]
[0] https://github.com/ocornut/imgui
In Could ImGUI Be the Future of GUIs?I also had no idea what "immediate mode GUI" meant. Granted, it's been while since I've done any non-browser UI work.
Browsing the Dear ImGui project, it looks pretty cool.
https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/wiki
From the hip, I'd say one big difference is the API for modals is blocking (waiting for user input), vs callback. That's pretty cool.
I don't yet know how non-modal is handled. Edit: Ah, it looks like return values are also wired up directly, vs the indirection of an event model or listeners. Clever.
--
At this time, I don't think comparisons (in this thread) to OpenGL's immediate ("interactive") vs retained ("batched") modes are relevant.
In Immediate Mode GUII think you have it exactly backwards. Most ImGUI use cases are extremely complex UIs and that's where they excel.
One of the most complex apps out there, Unity, is entirely ImGUI based for the app itself and often has 1000s of controls visible. Going though the screenshots of typical ImGUI usage most of them are on the complex side.
https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/8225057/20628927/...
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wiki/ocornut/imgui/web/v16...
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/16171743/50757906-...
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/8225057/51042368-6...
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/870320/51073482-ba...
See https://github.com/ocornut/imgui#Gallery for more
In Immediate Mode GUII'd argue an ImGUI does't mix anything. It's just a library. If you want MVC it's up to you to implement your MVC and use your ImGUI as a library. Retained mode GUIs don't magically make your code MVC and ImGUIs don't magically make your code not MVC. That's entirely up to you.
Also ImGUIs are not multiple pass. That's in implementation detail. Unity's ImGUI is multi-pass. One of the most popular ImGUIs (Dear ImGUI) is single pass
https://github.com/ocornut/imgui
In Immediate Mode GUIWhat a rude comment. It's not a specialized term. It's a common term. Immediate mode GUI as a concept is well known. Tens of thousands of programmers use Immediate Mode GUIs. There are several well known Immediate Mode GUI libraries used by tens of thousands of projects.
When I don't know a term I google it. I don't assume the entire world revolves around me and that it's the author job to make their article more verbose because everyone reading it might not know every term.
Here's are galleries of some from one of the more popular libraries
https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/issues/2265
https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/issues/1902
https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/issues/1607
https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/issues/1269
In Immediate Mode GUIYou can always encapsulate your custom IMGUI component in a function (or even a class, if you really want!) You should look at how custom components are made in IMGUI (for example, plotting variables: https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/wiki/plot_var_example)
In Immediate Mode GUIShowing the 15 most recent of 23 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.