Gtk

Your app is a GTK 4 program, and Libadwaita adds a design system on top of GTK instead of replacing it — so a GNOME app draws widgets from both. There is no Adw.Entry, no Adw.DropDown and no Adw.MenuButton. An app that needs one uses GTK’s own widget, and the Adwaita stylesheet paints it.

This section holds those widgets: Gtk.Entry is here and Adw.EntryRow is under Adwaita, and the two are different widgets one namespace apart.

Which library a widget is documented under

A widget is documented under the library that owns its GType, which is the rule @gjsify/gtk-host already uses to name its tags.

These pages read like the Adwaita ones, three windows per widget with the Blueprint beside the TypeScript, as How a widget page reads explains. Blueprint is the way to lay these widgets out too, with the same setup.

Get the widgets

On the desktop the widgets come from the GTK 4 library already installed on the machine. @girs/gtk-4.0 is the type package for it, and nothing else is needed:

import Gtk from 'gi://Gtk?version=4.0';

const entry = new Gtk.Entry({ placeholderText: 'Search files…' });

In the browser and on a phone these widgets come from the same packages as the Adwaita ones, installed the same way, and the GType rule names them there too: Gtk.Entry is <gtk-entry> and Gtk.MenuButton is <gtk-menu-button> in @gjsify/adwaita-web, and Gtk.Entry and Gtk.MenuButton in @gjsify/adwaita-nativescript. Both export them from a Gtk namespace. What makes them look Adwaita is the stylesheet, not the widget.

<gtk-entry placeholder="Search files…"></gtk-entry>

The namespaces beside `Gtk`

Both ports export Gtk beside Adw and a Gio namespace that holds Gio.Menu, which is what a menu button’s model takes, and Gtk.StringList and Gtk.Adjustment for the widgets that need them.

Browse the widgets

Controls The standalone entry and drop down, the checkbox with its half-made state and the light switch, whose row twins are in the Adwaita boxed lists.

Buttons The plain button and the style classes that shape it, then the ones that add a state or a target: the toggle button, the link button, the scale button, the colour and font dialog buttons, and the menu button that opens a popover.

Dialogs GTK's about window with its stack switcher, the emoji chooser a text widget opens, and the page setup and print dialogs Unix has instead of native ones.

Drawing The blank canvas you paint yourself, the GL surface behind it, the child handed straight to the compositor, and the icon that follows the pointer during a drag.

Scrolling The scrolled window with the scrollbars it draws itself, the viewport underneath it, and the titlebar handle.

Indicators The progress bar for work with a measurable amount left, the level bar for a quantity in a range, and GTK's own busy spinner.

Text The single-line text behind every entry, the multi-line editor, the label you edit in place and the search bar that reveals a field.

Media The symbolic icon, an image fitted to its box, text held to a size in characters and lines, and a video with its transport.

Layout The separator that draws a rule between two groups, or a gap when it is a spacer.

Lists The containers that hold children you append — the list box, the flow box that reflows it, and the month grid.

Models The views that draw a list model through a factory — list, grid and column — and the tree expander in front of a tree row.

Stacks The stack that shows one child at a time, the switcher and sidebar that switch over it, and the notebook of draggable tabs.

Popovers The surface itself, the menu-model popover, a menu bar of them, and the container that turns a right click into one.

Windows The window chrome: the header bar and the frame buttons at its ends, the bottom bar, and the two window classes a GTK app is built around.

Where the Adwaita widgets are

Everything libadwaita ships has its own section: boxed lists and their rows, header bars and clamps, split views, view switchers, avatars, banners and dialogs. Start at Adwaita.

The Adwaita Storybook carries both sets in one component browser you can poke at. Run it as a native window with gjsify storybook.