What is Hermes?

Hermes is a modern, AOT-compatible native desktop framework for .NET. It enables you to build cross-platform desktop applications with web-based UIs using native windows, menus, dialogs, and WebView integration.

Key Features

• Cross-Platform — Build once, run on Windows, macOS, and Linux
• Native Menus — Full native menu bar support with runtime modification for plugin systems
• Native Dialogs — File/folder selection dialogs that look native on each platform
• WebView Integration — WebView2 (Windows), WKWebView (macOS), WebKitGTK (Linux)
• Blazor First-Class — Hermes.Blazor provides seamless Blazor integration
• AOT Compatible — Uses LibraryImport instead of DllImport for full AOT support
• Minimal Native Code — ~3,800 LOC total (mostly C#) vs 12,300+ in alternatives

Quick Example

using Hermes;

var window = new HermesWindow()
    .SetTitle("My App")
    .SetSize(1024, 768)
    .Center()
    .Load("https://example.com");

window.WaitForClose();

With Blazor

using Hermes.Blazor;

var builder = HermesBlazorAppBuilder.CreateDefault(args);

builder.ConfigureWindow(options =>
{
    options.Title = "My Blazor App";
    options.Width = 1024;
    options.Height = 768;
});

builder.RootComponents.Add<App>("#app");

var app = builder.Build();
app.Run();

Platform Support

Platform	WebView	Native Code
Windows	WebView2	None (pure C# with CsWin32)
macOS	WKWebView	~500 LOC Objective-C
Linux	WebKitGTK	None (pure C# with GtkSharp)

Why Hermes?

See Why Hermes? for a comparison with alternatives like Photino, Electron, and Tauri.

Getting Started

Ready to build your first app? Start with the Installation Guide.