July 2026 Status Update

In July, we added uv support to Briefcase, landed some patches for mobile support in some major Python projects, and welcomed a new member to the BeeWare core team.

What we've done

• We welcomed Oliver Leigh to the core team, in recognition of his ongoing contributions to Toga's WinForms backend.
• We attended EuroPython, where Malcolm Smith spoke about supporting Android and iOS in Python packages.
• We continued the rework of Briefcase's environment management, adding isolated virtual environments for each app,and support for using uv to manage app environments. Support for using Conda to manage app environments is in the final stages of review.
• We finalized Android and iOS support in NumPy. Android and iOS have now been accepted as Tier 3 supported platforms in NumPy.
• We contributed iOS support for contourpy and kiwisolver.
• We resolved a long-standing issue with the stability of the iOS simulator on GitHub Actions.
• We exposed macOS app lifecycle notifications as hooks, giving app authors a way to respond to native lifecycle events such as activation, hiding, and termination.
• We finalized Toga's switch to libgirepository 2.0, formally deprecating support for Debian 12 and Ubuntu 22.04.
• We added a new WinForms event loop implementation that dramatically improves the performance of Windows apps.
• We fixed a cluster of WinForms DPI scaling problems, including issues with Canvas scaling, some DPI scaling bugs, and incorrect divider positioning.
• We extracted the Microsoft WebView2 binary components out of toga-winforms into their own package.
• We added system-pyside6 integration for Toga's Qt backend, allowing Toga to follow the operating system's theme on Qt-based Linux desktops.
• We fixed keyboard dismissal on input widgets on iOS.
• We added a testbed probe for the Textual backend, allowing automated testing of that backend.
• We started implementing Toga's new Scaffold layer. This is the start of the "Big Picture app navigation" design that we published earlier this year.
• We corrected an issue with shut down event handling in Rubicon ObjC.
• We removed a vestigial logging handler left over from the NSLog to os_log migration in the iOS Xcode template.
• We added support for creating a desktop shortcut for Windows apps.
• We fixed an MSI packaging bug where shortcut descriptions longer than 256 characters would break the installer.
• We added a fix for the "Mark of the Web" problem with Windows apps distributed as ZIP files.
• We replaced flake8 and isort with Ruff in Briefcase's project template.
• We started hardening our GitHub Actions workflows, adding zizmor security scanning across many of our repositories, consolidating our Dependabot configuration with cool down periods and adding multi-ecosystem grouping.
• We added Ukrainian translations of the BeeWare website.
• We reworked the success stories page on the BeeWare website, and added a new success story from Juno.

Much of this work is due to the contributions of members of the BeeWare community. Thanks to Rahul Patel (@100jinwoo001), Abdo (@abdnh), Oluwatoyosi Peter Abolaji (@abj360), @alex-indi, Michaela Dušková (@amfibio), @armorbreak001, Andrew Barnes (@Bortlesboat), @ColumbusLabs, Daniel Del Rio (@ddelrio1986), Dresden (@DresdenGman), @emerardd, Jan Koprowski (@jankoprowski), @jlonsdalen, John (@johnzhou721), Kevin Turcios (@KRRT7), Aleš Laník (@Krumca97), Robin (@lrandersson), Jonathan (@mgalore), Mgs. Tabrani (@mgstabrani), Matt Van Horn (@mvanhorn), Rohit Madhavan (@ROHITCRAFTSYT), Shaurya Srivastava (@Shaurya2k06), @Solaris-star, Sneha (@suscripty), Likhitha J (@TensorDevLJ), Thomas Nguyen (@thomxsnguyen), and xintao (@xintao0312) for their code and documentation contributions this month.

What's next?

In the coming month, we'll be looking at Briefcase's handling of downloads. The main improvement will be adding support for hash verification of downloads. We're also hoping to develop a better workflow for bootstrapping a Briefcase installation, especially in tutorial situations.

We will also be performing some updates to Toga's Android backend. Android SDK 36 introduced some changes to the visual layout of apps. Until recently, we've been able to work around these issues. By the end of August, Google will require all apps to be fully compliant with SDK 36 to be submitted to the App Store.

At the end of the month, we will be attending PyCon AU, where we'll be presenting a workshop on building cross-platform GUI apps, plus talks on mechanisms for distributing Python code and switching your project documentation from Sphinx to Markdown. We'll also be there for the Development Sprint day. If you're able to make it, make sure you say hello!

Want to get involved?

Want to get involved? We curate issues that should be approachable for first-time contributors to BeeWare. They're all relatively minor changes, but would provide a big improvement to the lives of BeeWare users:

• If you're interested in the tooling for deploying applications to various platforms, take a look at Briefcase.
• Or, if you're interested in GUI widgets, take a look at Toga.

These lists can also be filtered by platform - so you can find issues that are specific to your preferred operating system. Pick one of these tickets, drop a comment on the ticket to let others know you're looking at it, and try your hand at a PR! We have a guide on setting up a Briefcase development environment; but if you need any additional assistance or guidance, you can ask on the ticket, or join us on the BeeWare Discord server.