pythonnative 0.16.0

Cross-platform native UI toolkit for Android and iOS

Build native Android and iOS apps in Python.

Documentation · Getting Started · Examples · Contributing

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Overview

PythonNative is a cross-platform toolkit for building native Android and iOS apps in Python. It provides a declarative, React-like component model with hooks and automatic reconciliation, powered by Chaquopy on Android and rubicon-objc on iOS. Write function components with use_state, use_effect, and friends, just like React, and let PythonNative handle creating and updating native views.

Features

• Declarative UI: Describe what your UI should look like with element functions (Text, Button, Column, Row, etc.). PythonNative creates and updates native views automatically.
• Hooks and function components: Manage state with use_state, side effects with use_effect, and navigation with use_navigation, all through one consistent pattern.
• Typed style prop: Pass all visual and layout properties through a single style dict, fully described by the pn.Style TypedDict and the ergonomic pn.style(...) helper for IDE autocomplete and static checking. Compose reusable styles with StyleSheet.
• Cross-platform flexbox engine: A pure-Python, Yoga-style layout engine computes frames once and applies them to native views, so flex, padding, aspect_ratio, and position: "absolute" produce the same geometry on Android and iOS.
• Virtual view tree + reconciler: Element trees are diffed and patched with minimal native mutations, similar to React's reconciliation.
• Direct native bindings: Python calls platform APIs directly through Chaquopy and rubicon-objc, with no JavaScript bridge.
• Custom-component SDK: Wrap any platform widget as a first-class element with type-checked props via pythonnative.sdk (Props, @native_component, element_factory). Plugins distributed on PyPI auto-register through the pythonnative.handlers entry-point group.
• CLI scaffolding: pn init creates a ready-to-run project; pn run android and pn run ios build and launch your app.
• Native-backed navigation: Declarative Stack, Tab, and Drawer navigators inspired by React Navigation. The root stack drives the platform's native navigation controller (UINavigationController on iOS, AndroidX Navigation Component on Android), so transitions, back gestures, and the hardware back button match what users expect.
• Fast Refresh hot reload: pn run --hot-reload watches app/ and patches edits into the running app on save, preserving component state across most changes.
• Bundled templates: Android Gradle and iOS Xcode templates are included, so scaffolding requires no network access.

Quick Start

Installation

pip install pythonnative

Usage

import pythonnative as pn


@pn.component
def App():
    count, set_count = pn.use_state(0)
    return pn.Column(
        pn.Text(f"Count: {count}", style=pn.style(font_size=24, bold=True)),
        pn.Button(
            "Tap me",
            on_click=lambda: set_count(count + 1),
        ),
        style=pn.style(spacing=12, padding=16),
    )

Documentation

Visit docs.pythonnative.com for the full documentation, including getting started guides, platform-specific instructions for Android and iOS, API reference, and working examples.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for setup instructions, coding standards, and guidelines for submitting pull requests.

License

MIT