Elysium UI

Python UI without the rectangles.

Status: 1.0 — production / stable. The public API follows strict semver; see the CHANGELOG.

A GPU-accelerated framework for borderless, shaped, animated Python desktop applications. Skia + wgpu hybrid rendering, designer-and- developer split via .esk skin files, animation as a first-class citizen, and a dedicated authoring app (Elysium Designer).

It targets Qt/PySide6 parity for desktop UI while deliberately staying focused on the UI layer — see the scope statement for what's in and what's left to the Python ecosystem.

Documentation

• Framework: docs.elysiumui.com (the elysium Python package)
• Designer: designer.elysiumui.com (the .esk authoring app)

Both sites build from this repo: docs/ and docs-designer/.

Quick start

pip install elysium-ui

Run the minimum borderless ellipse window:

import elysium as ely

ELLIPSE = "M 0,180 A 180,180 0 1 0 360,180 A 180,180 0 1 0 0,180 Z"

app = ely.App(title="Hello", identifier="dev.example.hello")
window = app.window(transparent=True, title_bar=False,
                    resizable=False, initial_size=(360, 360))
window.set_hit_test_path(ELLIPSE)
app.run()

A 360 by 360 transparent ellipse window appears with no chrome, clipping clicks to the ellipse.

Four lead demos

The Getting Started tutorials walk through four flagship apps:

Together they exercise the entire public API: App, Window, shaped windows, skins, signals, effects, Tweens, Springs, Timelines, themes, components, brush, PBR, AI, marketplace.

The Designer

The companion authoring app ships as a signed standalone executable per OS:

• macOS: Elysium Designer.app
• Windows: ElysiumDesigner.exe
• Linux: Elysium-Designer.AppImage

Download from releases, or build from source (see the build-from-source guide).

The Designer's lead tutorial is the Blue Morpho to Monarch butterfly texture-transfer workflow, which produces the same .esk the Butterfly Banner framework demo loads.

Architecture

Build from source

# Native + Python in one command:
maturin develop --release

# Rust workspace tests:
cd elysium-native && cargo test --workspace

# Python suite:
pytest python/elysium/

# Live-window end-to-end test (gated on a display):
ELYSIUM_RUN_WINDOW_TEST=1 pytest tests/test_smoke.py::test_phase0_live_window_end_to_end

Contributors: see CONTRIBUTING.md and the contributing guide on the docs site.

Where the artifacts land

The framework directory holds the pip-installable wheel + universal sdist produced by maturin build --release --sdist. The Designer directories hold the single-file PyInstaller bundles produced by scripts/build-designer.sh (or .ps1 on Windows) — no Python install required to run, since each bundle ships its own interpreter and the compiled native extension.

Cross-platform wheels + Designer binaries also come out of CI: trigger release-library.yml for wheels (Win/Mac arm64+x86_64/Linux), or build-binaries.yml for the Designer matrix.

Examples

License

Permissive. See LICENSE.

Links

• docs.elysiumui.com (framework)
• designer.elysiumui.com (Designer)
• GitHub Releases
• PyPI
• Issues
• Discussions