Building Applications

Wails v3 uses Task as its build system. The wails3 build and wails3 package commands are convenient wrappers around Task.

Building

Build for the current platform:

bash
wails3 build

Build for a specific platform:

bash
wails3 build GOOS=windows
wails3 build GOOS=darwin
wails3 build GOOS=linux

# With architecture
wails3 build GOOS=darwin GOARCH=arm64

# Environment variable style works too
GOOS=windows wails3 build

Output goes to the bin/ directory.

Development

Run your application with hot reload:

bash
wails3 dev

This starts a file watcher that rebuilds and restarts your app on changes. The frontend dev server runs on port 9245 by default.

bash
# Custom port
wails3 dev -port 3000

# Enable HTTPS
wails3 dev -s

Packaging

Package your app for distribution:

bash
wails3 package
wails3 package GOOS=windows
wails3 package GOOS=darwin
wails3 package GOOS=linux

This creates platform-specific packages:

Custom Build Tags

Pass custom Go build tags with the -tags flag:

bash
# Build with legacy GTK3 + WebKit2GTK 4.1 on Linux (default is GTK4 + WebKitGTK 6.0)
wails3 build -tags gtk3

# Build in server mode (no GUI, CGO-free)
wails3 build -tags server

# Combine multiple tags
wails3 build -tags gtk3,customtag

Tags are forwarded as EXTRA_TAGS to the underlying Taskfile. See Server Build and Linux Packaging - Legacy GTK3 Support for details.

Using Task Directly

For more control, use Task directly:

bash
# List available tasks
wails3 task --list

# Verbose output
wails3 task build -v

# Dry run
wails3 task --dry

# Force rebuild
wails3 task build -f

# Pass variables
wails3 task darwin:build ARCH=amd64

Platform-specific tasks like linux:create:deb or darwin:build:universal are only available through Task.

Generating Assets

Regenerate icons or update build configuration:

bash
wails3 generate icons -input build/appicon.png
wails3 update build-assets -name "MyApp" -config build/config.yml -dir build
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