Ely GPUI

Ely is a Rust component library for GPUI, the GPU-rendered UI framework the Zed editor is built on. Despite the "GPU" in the name, it is not a GPU rental service or anything about GPU compute. It is a widget library for native Rust desktop apps. Checked 2026-10-19 against the homepage, the docs, the installation page, the getting started page, the author's project page, and the source repository.

Who is behind it

The author is Zachary Zhang (zacharyzhang.com), who describes himself there as a New York-based AI founder and product/technology lead, and as the official Chinese maintainer of Omarchy Linux. The same page lists Elydora (agent accountability infrastructure), Kigi CLI (a Rust multi-agent coding CLI), Ely GPUI, and Ely Office (six offline desktop apps on GPUI). Those self-descriptions were not verified independently.

What it offers

• 44 "chapters" from primitives, typography, layout, forms, menus and overlays to tables, charts, finance (candles, order books, tapes), a code editor (folds, minimap, multiple cursors), terminal, git, debug, documents, AI chat and agent views, mail, calendar, maps, dashboards, theme, i18n and a11y.
• One theme for every component: light and dark, high contrast, color-blind-safe charts, and tokens for color, size, radius and shadow. Theme::set_mode cross-fades every window.
• Keyboard first: init binds Tab and Shift-Tab, a root FocusScope keeps focus in the window, and every pressable control is a Tab stop with a focus ring.
• Reduced motion is honored: durations drop to a millisecond and repeating motion holds still.
• A gallery (cargo run --example gallery) that also compiles to WebAssembly and runs in the browser through gpui_web on WebGPU or WebGL2. The terminal is native only. Tray icon, Dock badge and web view are macOS only.
• Bundled renderers for Markdown, Mermaid diagrams (mermaid-rs-renderer), LaTeX math (ratex-*), QR codes and barcodes, according to Cargo.toml.

The live gallery was not opened in a browser for this note.

How to use it

[dependencies]
ely-gpui-component = { git = "https://git.zacharyzhang.com/ZacharyZhang-NY/Ely-GPUI-Components" }
gpui = { package = "gpui-pre", version = "=0.3.8" }
gpui_platform = { package = "gpui-pre-platform", version = "=0.3.8", features = ["font-kit"] }

An Ely app is a GPUI app with four more parts:

1. gpui_platform::application().with_assets(Assets), since Ely embeds its icons and fonts.
2. ely_gpui_component::init(cx)? once, before any window.
3. A root FocusScope::new(&handle).root() around each window's content.
4. Colors, sizes and radii from cx.theme().

Pitfalls the docs list:

• gpui must be the same gpui-pre =0.3.8 snapshot. Any other version or a git source builds a second GPUI and gives mismatched types.
• Without the font-kit feature, macOS windows draw no text.
• The default runtime_shaders feature compiles Metal shaders at run time, so full Xcode is not needed. With default-features = false the build needs xcrun metal.
• Pin the commit with rev = "...", because Cargo.lock is the only thing holding it otherwise.

Trust and maturity signals

Inconsistent counts: the homepage says 1,279 components and 44 chapters; the author's page says 1,272 components and 43 chapters. The number of usable, production-quality components was not checked.

Nothing looks like a scam. There is no payment, no account, and no binary download. But it is a very new single-author project on a personal git server, with no community track record yet.

Pros and cons

Pros : Very broad catalog for GPUI, which ships few finished widgets. Consistent theming and keyboard focus. Live browser gallery to try before adding. MIT license. Detailed docs with a troubleshooting table.

Cons : Weeks old, one maintainer, pre-1.0 (0.1.1). Git-only dependency on a self-hosted forge, so the source and its availability depend on one personal server. Hard pin to gpui-pre =0.3.8, so it breaks if your app needs another GPUI. macOS only in practice. No independent users or reviews yet.

Alternatives

• longbridge/gpui-kit (formerly gpui-component, about 18k stars on 2026-10-19). It is the established GPUI component library, already listed in Web And Desktop Frameworks. Ely's docs say GPUI Kit pins the same gpui-pre snapshot.
• zed-industries/awesome-gpui, for other GPUI projects.

For a real app, GPUI Kit is the safer default today. Ely is worth watching or borrowing from, especially for finance, editor, or chat surfaces, if you can live with a macOS-only, git-pinned dependency.