BeeWare: The Buzz

We'll be at PyCon US 2026!

russell@beeware.org (Russell Keith-Magee) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 06:15:37 +0000

Russell, Kattni and Malcolm will be attending PyCon US 2026 from May 13 - May 19, 2026!

The conference will be held at the Long Beach Convention Center in Long Beach, California, and will feature tutorials, talks, summits, sprints and more.

You can find us throughout PyCon US 2026:

Russell will be giving a talk entitled How to give your Python code to someone else.
Russell, Kattni and Malcolm will be hosting a sprint.

Please come say hello, we'd love to meet you. We're looking forward to seeing you there!

May 2026 Status Update

russell@beeware.org (Russell Keith-Magee) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 06:15:37 +0000

May was dominated by PyCon US, where the BeeWare team ran another successful sprint, resulting in a number of improvements - many from first time contributors.

What we've done¶

We presented 2 main track talks at PyCon US - one on mechanisms for distributing Python code, and one on switching your project documentation from Sphinx to Markdown. We also presented at the Web Assembly Summit, and Packaging Summit.
We rolled out a series of updates to our GitHub Action workflows, simplifying our use of Dependabot, and adding some improvements to help users identify if they haven't filled out our PR template or provided a Towncrier change note.
We adopted the use of our new warning banner helper throughout the Briefcase repository, replacing the existing banners.
We improved Briefcase's validation of bundle identifiers, allowing single-dot bundle IDs while still rejecting invalid ones.
Now that Python.net supports Python 3.14, we have removed the warning in the BeeWare tutorial that advised against using Python 3.14 on Windows.
We modified Toga's Canvas widget to expose drawing-context attributes (fill_style, stroke_style, line_width, line_dash) along with save/restore methods, continuing the alignment with the HTML5 Canvas API, and completed a comprehensive revamp of the documentation of the Canvas widget.
We implemented dark mode detection in Toga for iOS, web, and Windows.
We addressed some reliability problems with Toga's app-level dialogs on macOS 26.
We modified Toga's Window initialization process to ensure event handlers exist before the underlying widget is constructed.
We added keyboard toggling for nodes in the Toga's WinForms Tree widget.
We modified the handling of static HTML content in the Android WebView, fixing a rendering problem observed when content contained characters such as #.
We improved Toga's GTK MapView handling of null values.
We corrected an issue with the Toga testbed app that caused tests to fail if the user had multiple monitors.
We documented the limitations of OptionContainer on mobile platforms.
We ensured Toga's codebase checks for default encoding warnings, and corrected some examples where encoding wasn't being explicitly specified.
We improved the resilience of Toga's WebView tests under Qt.
We migrated Briefcase's project template to include a Markdown README.
We improved the BeeWare overview page with details about the platforms that BeeWare supports.
We corrected a configuration issue that broke compilation of Python for iOS on macOS 26.
We landed the cibuildwheel improvements needed for building NumPy and related packages on Android, and added Android support to auditwheel. Together, these are the foundation that will let cibuildwheel build a much wider range of scientific-Python wheels for Android.

Much of this work is due to the contributions of members of the BeeWare community, many of these users contributed at the PyCon US Sprints. Thanks to Abdo (@abdnh), Abdur-Rahmaan Janhangeer (@Abdur-rahmaanJ), @AJTheDataGuy, @albertchae, Aman Sachan (@AmSach), Aqil Aziz (@aqilaziz), @atuseract, Audrey Dang (@audreydng), Campbell (@ceggy91), @changquan, Andy P Fundinger (@Ciemaar), @drewRB, Chris Patti (@feoh), Grant Wang (@gwdio), Michael Wilson (@hyperboloid), Ian Dolge (@iandolge), Joel Peter (@joelpeter-c), John (@johnzhou721), Jorge (@jvigueras), @lihua-xinghun, Matthew Wygal (@matthew-wy), Miro (@Mirochill), Jeong Kim @mrds555, Matt Van Horn (@mvanhorn), @Nando301, Oliver Leigh (@Oliver-Leigh), Taiwo Osunrinde (@osunrinde), Puneet Dixit (@puneetdixit200), Robert J Spencer (@Rjvs), @Rowlando13, Shannon (@shannonmcin), Darryl Wang (@Tridwoxi), @tylerboutwell, Vinicius Gubiani Ferreira (@vinigfer), and David_C (@YuDavidCao) for their code and documentation contributions this month.

What's next?¶

On the technical front, in the coming month, we'll also be looking into options for updating code in a running app; and continuing work on the "big picture" app navigation plan published earlier in the year. If time permits, we'll begin investigations into the use of Conda environments in Briefcase apps.

We're also planning to step up our efforts to build the BeeWare community. We've developed a reputation at PyCon US for running extremely effective sprints; but we need to do more of that outreach for people who can't make it to PyCon. We've already begun doing an audit of our outstanding issues in the hope of curating a more actionable list of work for contributors; and we're going to start being more active on social media, including reaching out to more social media channels. We're also going to host our first Community Call - a monthly live video event where members of the core team and community members can share what they've been working on. Join us on Discord on June 11 at 11PM UTC (7PM EDT, 4PM PDT, 9AM AEST) (and yes - we're planning to add calls at other times more convenient for European and Asian audiences).

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 contribution guide; but if you need any additional assistance or guidance, you can ask on the ticket, or join us on the BeeWare Discord server.

March 2026 Status Update

russell@beeware.org (Russell Keith-Magee) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 06:15:37 +0000

March has seen some big improvements in Briefcase, as well as some major discussions of design and policy issues in the rest of the project.

What we've done¶

We released Briefcase 0.4.0! This release makes a major change to how development mode operates for apps, isolating the dependencies of the app being developed from the environment that is running Briefcase.
We upgraded Briefcase to use PEP639 license format.
We added support for dynamic PEP 621 project metadata. This allows apps to have their version number configured by version control tags.
We addressed CVE-2026-33430, a security issue which allowed for potential privilege escalation in Windows MSI installers.
We added the ability to configure the Android ABIs that are targeted as part of a Briefcase build.
We made a retry mechanism to make project cleanup mechanisms more robust on Windows.
We started experimenting with the use of ty to enforce type compliance in the Briefcase codebase.
We added validation of MIME type definitions on document types.
We modified MSI installers to allow install scripts to inherit elevated privileges of the installing user.
In order to address some emerging issues and questions about the use of AI tools in contributions to BeeWare, we discussed the possible adoption of an AI contribution policy, and then published a draft policy and drafted a set of agent guides for Briefcase.
We published a design plan for the next collection of Toga widgets, governing "Big Picture" app navigation.
We added a FastAPI bootstrap for Toga's Positron plugin.
We experimented with a PyScript bootstrap for Positron. This work is still dependent on some experimental tools, but we hope we'll be able to release this in the near future.
We added support for column resizing in Qt tables.
We modified the API for Table and Tree to allow explicit definition of columns. This provides a much more flexible mechanism for configuring the display of Table and Tree widgets.
We added a mechanism for lazy loading and dynamic registration of widgets. In addition to reducing app startup time, this allows third party libraries to provide widget implementations that Toga doesn't provide, and to register entirely new widget types.
We added a Switch widget for Toga's Textual backend.
We added a Tree widget to the WinForms backend. This has one of the more notable missing widgets from Toga's API.
We modified how notifications from data sources are handled so that a ListSource can be a listener on other sources.
We corrected a bug in Toga's handling of presentation mode that would prevent more than one window from being put into presentation mode.
We migrated Rubicon ObjC's test suite to pytest, and performed a large refactor of the tests to break up some large test files.
We contributed a migration of CPython's iOS build code to the new "Platforms" directory, and reviewed a comparable change for Emscripten. CPython has grown a number of new platforms in recent releases; this refactor is an organizational change that allows all platform-specific build tooling to be in a single subdirectory, rather than having lots of top-level directories. A similar set of patches for Android are in development.
We made some improvements to the CPython iOS build script and Android build script for consistency with other platform tools.
We submitted Android support to auditwheel and meson-python, and enabled automated Android testing of pybind11.
After the launch of the updated BeeWare website at the end of last month, we've addressed a number of small cosmetic, linking and translation issues that were reported, including improvements to the layout of upcoming events, improvements in mobile rendering, and ensuring as much content as possible can be translated.
We added sections to the contribution guide on retrieving repository tags, and using the gh tool to open issues.
We resolved an issue with the preservation of spaces in code blocks when copying sample code content.
We optimized the build of the tutorial to build all languages in a single pass.
We replaced the use of a JSON API with an internal link under our control.

Much of this work is due to the contributions of members of the BeeWare community. Thanks to Mattijs Ugen (@akaIDIOT), Aleksei Pirogov (@astynax), Filip Łajszczak (@filiplajszczak), Johanan Oppong Amoateng (@JohananOppongAmoateng), John (@johnzhou721), Robin (@lrandersson), lif (@majiayu000), @Oliver-Leigh, @Pulga8, Scott Halgrim (@shalgrim), Tom Arn (@t-arn), Eyal Tabib (@tabibeyal), and Zyad Haddad (@Trighap52) for their code and documentation contributions this month.

What's next?¶

We'll be publishing our Q2 roadmap in a couple of weeks. In addition to some progress in Toga that is aligned with the design plans we laid out this quarter, we're hoping that Q2 will see some experimentation with how Briefcase can be used to improve the process of developing and deploying apps. The hope is by making some relatively small changes to how Briefcase starts mobile applications, we will be able to speed up the app development process, and enable some interesting use cases for deploying applications to mobile platforms.

We'll also be preparing for our attendance at PyCon US. We're presenting talks on mechanisms for distributing Python code and switching your project documentation from Sphinx to Markdown. We'll be there for both days of the sprints, as well as participating in a number of other events and generally lurking around the hallways.

Want to get involved?¶

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.

January 2026 Status Update

russell@beeware.org (Russell Keith-Magee) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 06:15:37 +0000

We've started 2026 with a buzz — a flurry of BeeWare activity on Toga's Canvas and Table widgets, Qt backend, as well as making some major progress on Android binary packaging.

What we've done¶

We have almost completed all the widgets in Toga's Qt backend, adding OptionContainer, ScrollContainer, DetailedList, Selection, Table, SplitContainer and MapView widgets, as well as support for all dialog types.
We made some API changes and corrected some bugs to make the Canvas API more closely aligned with the HTML5 Canvas specification. This is part of a larger set of changes cleaning up the implementation of Canvas.
We added the ability to add a bitmap image on a Canvas.
We made a large internal refactor of the Table and Tree widgets. This is the first step in improving the API for defining Table and Tree widgets to exposed some long-needed capabilities like sorting and specifying column widths.
We hardened the definition for providing icons in Table and Tree column data. The documented API has been specific for some time, but hasn't been implemented consistently on all platforms.
We modified the way Source objects are used to ensure that widgets no longer listen to stale sources when data changes.
We formalized the protocol definitions for data source listeners
We corrected some issues with the display of OptionContainers on Cocoa and GTK when content is changed on a non-visible tab.
We corrected a number of layout issues on iOS and iPad apps, including introducing the ability for iPad apps to operate in non-full screen mode.
We corrected some issues with scroll handling in ScrollContainer on macOS.
We corrected some issues with widget colors in dark mode on macOS.
We corrected some memory leak issues with Android widgets.
We added the ability to use the Python standard library webbrowser module in Toga Android apps.
We corrected the use of theme colors in DetailedList on Android.
We added the ability to be notified when a website completes loading on Android. This API feature was previously possible on every platform except Android.
We corrected the handling of icon sizes on buttons on Windows
We simplified the categories used in Toga's API reference docs.
We clarified the documentation around using Toga with a Python version other than the system default.
We added documentation of Toga's platform and backend selection APIs.
We ensured that content added to an OptionContainer or SplitContainer can accurately track the Window and App they are associated with.
We completed work on patches to NumPy, Pandas, SciPy, scikit-learn and xgboost allowing these projects to be built for Android. This also involved updates to tools including cibuildwheel, auditwheel, Meson, and Python's own Android testbed. We hope to upstream these patches to the corresponding projects in the near future.
We resolved an issue with Android buildbot testing in CPython. Both Android Buildbots stopped working in mid December for two different reasons; the cause of the problems is not entirely understood, but we were able to find workarounds and restore Buildbot testing.
We are nearing completion on a replacement for BeeWare's website. The new website will use the same MkDocs infrastructure that is used for our tutorial and project documentation. This will add dark mode, search capabilities, improved event and resources pages, and some other content simplifications to our website. It will also make our job easier as maintainers, as website builds are much faster, and adding new content to the site is easier.
We released updated Apple support packages for all supported Python versions. These updated versions are the first to adopt the XCFramework layout that has been accepted upstream by CPython, including scripts for managing the process of processing binary libraries on iOS.
We added the ability to reset all runtime permissions when running an app on Android.
We added the ability to merge folders named in sources and test_sources in a Briefcase configuration. This allows projects to overlay platform-specific content over a base project layout.
We added the ability for Windows MSI installers to reference the location of the original MSI in post-install scripts.
We improved our documentation of the use of signing identities.
We added the ability to open a single Briefcase app in a project that contains multiple app definitions.
We modified our System PySide library to support some common KDE extensions.
We corrected an issue with Toga Chart that prevented the example app from running on Android.
We corrected an issue with the handling of background images in DMGs on macOS Tahoe.
We corrected some issues with parsing the size and text-size properties and color hex regexes when creating DMGs.

Much of this work is due to the contributions of members of the BeeWare community. Thanks to Alec Delaney (@tekktrik), Barak (@BarakXYZ), Corran Webster (@corranwebster), Harsh Kumar (@thisisharsh7), John (@johnzhou721), @kshivani06, Mike Maietta (@mmaietta), @MTwem, @Nabhye, @rasmusJenle, @timrid, Tom Arn (@t-arn), and @YapWC for their code and documentation contributions this month.

What's next?¶

In the coming month, we're going to start work on improving Positron to better support PyScript apps. We're also going to perform some API design work around capabilities that are currently missing from Toga. This will include a design for Table and Tree widgets for mobile platforms, as well as tackling some high-level app navigation issues. Some of these discussions have already started this month; they will continue until we have finalized designs that can be implemented.

Want to get involved?¶

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.

February 2026 Status Update

russell@beeware.org (Russell Keith-Magee) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 06:15:37 +0000

February has seen a collection of improvements across the BeeWare ecosystem - including a couple of big milestones!

What we've done¶

We've launched a new version of our website! This primarily an infrastructure change - we've moved off Lektor, and onto a MkDocs-based site, matching the tooling that we're now using for the rest of BeeWare's documentation. This gives us much faster builds, better translation tooling, search… and dark mode! A huge shout out to Kattni for all her work getting this done.
We welcomed a new member of the BeeWare core team - Corran Webster. Over the last few months, Corran has taken Toga’s Qt backend from a bare stub to a widget-complete implementation. He’s also done some major internal design work around Toga's Table and Tree implementations, and added the long-requested ability to add bitmap images to a Canvas. That's a lot of work for a couple of months - we're excited to see what comes next!
We published new support packages for iOS and macOS, backporting some recent changes in CPython to our patches for Python 3.10-3.12.
We made significant progress on adding FastAPI and PyScript backends for Positron. The PyScript part of this backend has revealed some issues with the feature set of Android and iOS WebView widgets; we're working with the PyScript team to find a workaround for these problems.
We fixed several issues with the testbed application that is used to test Python on Android.
We added a plugin interface to Briefcase to allow for the definition of publication channels. We're working with the PythonAnywhere team to build a plugin that will allow for the publication of web apps.
We optimized the work that Briefcase does when inspecting app configurations on startup.
We added the ability to revoke permissions when running an app on Android.
We corrected an issue handling macOS wheels that have multiple platform tags.
We fixed some issues with Briefcase's version parsing logic.
We modified how Briefcase handles dependencies on Linux to ensure that package extras are preserved on packages that are specified as local dependencies.
We corrected an issue with the naming of DEB packages produced by Briefcase.
We improved the documentation for packaging apps that weren't created with Briefcase.
We finished porting all widgets for the Qt backend, adding a DetailedList and Tree widgets.
We corrected some issues with how Toga's canvas widget handles transforms in the middle of a path.
We added support for rounded rectangles on Canvas.
We corrected some edge cases in the handling of join mitering on Toga's Canvas widget.
We ensured that Toga's WebView widget can always handle HTML content provided as a string no matter how large that content is.
We modified Toga's codebase to make better use of abstract base classes (ABCs).
We added the ability for WinForms Table widgets to have an icon in every column, not just the first column.
We corrected some memory leaks in Toga's Windows backend.
We improved how corrupted icons are handled in Toga, providing a fallback path instead of a crash.
We fixed an intermittent issue with the testbed when testing Toga on Android.
We made some changes to our bug reporting template, and added a new template for reporting documentation issues.

What's next?¶

In March, we're hoping to wrap up our work on the FastAPI and PyScript plugins for Positron. The plugin is mostly done, but we're looking into some additional optimizations and improvements that will improve the experience when using the plugin.

However, most of our focus will be on design work around capabilities that are currently missing from Toga. This month saw some initial discussions on these topics. We're hoping that by the end of the month, we'll be able to resolve those discussions with some concrete designs that we can start to implement.

Want to get involved?¶

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.

December 2025 Status Update

russell@beeware.org (Russell Keith-Magee) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 06:15:37 +0000

Even with the impediment of end-of-year holidays restricting the availability of the core team, BeeWare has still seen some significant progress during December.

What we've done¶

We adopted an updated Code of Conduct, incorporating changes from Contributor Covenant 3.0.
We released Briefcase 0.3.26, Toga 0.5.3, and Rubicon Objective-C 0.5.3. These releases incorporate almost 4 months of changes.
We simplified our Dependabot and pre-commit update tasks to minimize the number of updates that need to be processed every week.
We rolled out a massive rework of our contribution guides. This update provides more comprehensive guidance on ways to contribute to BeeWare. It also allows us to share contribution content between projects, rather than duplicating that content.
We updated Briefcase to use Chaquopy 17.0.0, enabling support for Python 3.14.
We added the ability to debug Android applications with Briefcase.
We modified Briefcase to verify system requirements when running briefcase dev on Linux. This should eliminate a common source of errors when running the BeeWare tutorial on Linux.
We modified Briefcase's development mode to use an isolated virtual environment. This improves the correlation between the behavior of the development environment and the behavior of a packaged app.
We added the ability to have uninstall options in MSI installers.
We made significant improvements to Toga's Qt backend, adding PasswordInput, ProgressBar, NumberInput, DateInput and TimeInput, MultilineTextInput, WebView, Canvas, and Slider, Divider widgets, support for StatusIcon apps, and improved Font support.
We released system-pyside6, a Python package allowing Python apps in a virtual environment to use the system-provided PySide6 libraries.
We added initial support for Adwaita in the GTK4 backend.
We modified Toga's image handling to ensure that image files aren't left open after loading.
We corrected some edge cases in Toga's app name normalization.
We added documentation for Toga's color API.
We fixed the handling of nested OptionContainers on iOS 26+.
We added the ability to control whether a WebView is allowed to navigate to a new URL.
We added an API to determine the current backend being used by Toga.
We corrected an error raised when the locale defined by the system is unknown or invalid.
We improved the mechanism used to identify errors in the runtime Canvas tests.

What's next?¶

The holiday break means we haven't fully locked in our plans for January; but we're definitely expecting to see progress on Android packaging, and to wrap up some final work on iOS packaging. We expect to publish our full Q1 2026 goals late next week.

Want to get involved?¶

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.

April 2026 Status Update

russell@beeware.org (Russell Keith-Magee) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 06:15:37 +0000

April saw some extremely important improvements to BeeWare's Windows support, and some important new policy decisions.

What we've done¶

We formally adopted an AI and Autonomous code contribution policy. This policy is neutral on whether AI tools can be used for contribution, but clearly places the responsibility on a human contributor to take full responsibility for the output of any tool they use, and to declare if AI tooling has been used.
As part of adopting a format AI usage policy, we've added an AGENTS.md file, and a Spec Kit constitution to Briefcase, Toga, and Rubicon ObjC. We expect we'll be tweaking and tuning those configurations over time as we discover what does (and doesn't) work. If you've got experience in developing these foundational AI configuration files, we'd appreciate any suggestions or feedback you may have.
You can now build native ARM64 Windows binaries and installers with Briefcase.
We added support for detecting if .NET is installed as part of a Windows MSI installer.
We added the ability to customize the banner and background images in an MSI installer.
We added a utility method for formatting the banner-style warning messages that Briefcase generates. We haven't rolled out the usage of this banner across all parts of the Briefcase codebase, but it will allow us to improve consistency in the display of warning output.
We modified the new project wizard to improve the visibility of known third-party bootstraps.
We added a runtime checks for using an x86-64 Python interpreter on an Apple Silicon Mac. This configuration can cause issues when trying to run an iOS simulator.
We added the ability to create a "skinless" Android emulator. This is mostly useful for CI configurations, where the extra visual detail doesn't help, but downloading the skin will sometimes fail due to rate limits imposed by Google's servers.
We improved the verification of installed Android SDK images.
We added support for the use of .NET Core 10 in Toga. This was primarily required to support WinForms on ARM64, but it also means features like dark mode are now possible on WinForms.
We performed a major refactor of the internals of the Canvas widget, and modified the Canvas API to align better with JavaScript's HTML5 Canvas API.
We migrated Toga's Web backend to use WebAwesome, rather than Shoelace. WebAwesome is effectively "Shoelace 3", after the Shoelace project was adopted by the FontAwesome team.
We added a full implementation of DetailedList on WinForms. This was the last widget in Beta status on WinForms - WinForms is now widget complete!
We corrected some crashes that could occur on macOS when clicking on empty rows of a table, or the table header row.
We corrected an unusual bounce when calling scroll_to_bottom() on a WinForms MultilineText widget.
We made the definition of accessors optional when defining sources.
We added support for fonts that have been system-registered on iOS and macOS.
We normalized the feature set of the CPython Android build script with other platform build scripts.
We completed the migration of CPython Android build tooling to the Platforms folder.
We increased the RAM available to the Python Android testbed to accommodate more demanding test suites.
We submitted updates to cibuildwheel to support Android packages that use Fortran, NumPy's C API, and external libraries bundled with auditwheel.

Much of this work is due to the contributions of members of the BeeWare community. Thanks to Abdo (@abdnh), Keyang Zheng (@albuszheng), Filip Łajszczak (@filiplajszczak), John (@johnzhou721), Luis Palacios (@moondial-pal), Matt Van Horn (@mvanhorn), @Oliver-Leigh, @otekraden, Robert Kirkman (@robertkirkman), Matt Cooper (@vtbassmatt) for their code and documentation contributions this month.

Special thanks go to Scott Halgrim (@shalgrim), Juan (@Pulga8), and Vui Nguyen (@vuinguyen) who were contributing to BeeWare as part of Session 6 of the Djangonaut Space program. Go Team Mercury!

What's next?¶

A lot of May will be spent preparing for and attending PyCon US. We're presenting talks on mechanisms for distributing Python code and switching your project documentation from Sphinx to Markdown. We'll be there for both days of the sprints, hosting some open spaces (watch the boards at the venue for details), attending the community showcase, as well as participating in a other events and generally lurking around the hallways. Tickets are still available - if you're around, come say hi! We're actively looking for stories of how you're using BeeWare, or how you'd like to use BeeWare.

In what time that remains in the month, we'll be focused primarily on Briefcase, adding more customizations for MSI installers, and starting to experiment with mechanisms for improving the development experience for mobile apps.

Want to get involved?¶

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.

2026Q2 Roadmap

russell@beeware.org (Russell Keith-Magee) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 06:15:37 +0000

Q1 has seen some significant improvements to Toga, Android packages, and a milestone for official iOS support. As always, this roadmap should be read as a guide to what we aim to focus on over the coming quarter, rather than a hard commitment to features that will be made available on a specific deadline.

Q1 progress¶

The bulk of our activity in Q1 has focused on Toga. We completed work on Toga's new Qt backend, achieving full widget coverage. We made some significant improvements to the API for managing columns in Tree and Table widgets. On Windows, we've added an implementation of a Tree widget for the first time, and significantly improved the Table widget. We made a major change to how widgets are imported, improving load times for Toga apps, and allowing third-party libraries to register their own widgets and their own implementations of existing widgets. We also performed a major refactor of the Canvas widget API, improving consistency between Toga's Python API and the HTML5 Canvas API that we use as a reference implementation.

We also made improvements to Toga's Positron plugin. Positron is Toga's answer to Electron - a way to build cross-platform apps where the user interface is provided by a web page. However, Positron allows you to use Python web servers rather than JavaScript - and unlike Electron, allows for the development of hybrid applications and mobile application. This quarter, we added the ability to deploy a FastAPI website; improved the tooling for building an app from an existing website; and we've built a prototype of a new PyScript backend that allows client-side browser code to access server-side capabilities.

However, the biggest Toga news for the quarter is that we laid out a design plan for the next phase of Toga's development, addressing issues of "Big Picture" app design. The set of widgets offered by Toga is reasonably complete for most platforms. At this point, the issue facing application developers - especially on mobile platforms - is how to represent navigation between content in a large app. After some public discussions, we've laid out a plan for a range of improvements that should enable users to write reasonably complex applications in Toga, while retaining cross-platform, single source base compatibility. This plan will form the basis of Toga development for the coming months.

Work on Android wheels has progressed. We have published updated internal Android wheels for a number of key data science packages, including NumPy, Pandas, SciPy, scikit-learn and xgboost. Developing these patches involved developing updates to a variety of tools that are used to build wheels, including cibuildwheel, auditwheel, Meson, and Python's own Android testbed. The patches resulting from this work take time to get upstream; that work will proceed in the background over the coming months.

We have completed the work adding iOS to CPython's release artefacts. As a result, Python 3.15.0b1 should include an official CPython iOS XCFramework that can be incorporated into an iOS project. As part of this work, we've also assisted with a large cleanup of the CPython repository, moving all the platform-specific build tooling for iOS, Android and Emscripten into a single "Platforms" directory. Along the way, we've addressed some minor inconsistencies and usage issues with these build scripts.

We released Briefcase 0.4.0, which includes a major improvement to the operation of development mode operates for apps, isolating the dependencies of the app being developed from the environment that is running Briefcase. It also includes support for PEP 639 license specifications - part of an ongoing effort to align Briefcase metadata with PEP 621. We've also started experimenting with the use of ty to enforce type annotations in Briefcase's code.

After some discussion by the team, we've made the decision to adopt an AI Contribution policy. This policy adopts a neutral stance on the use of AI tooling; however, it requires formal declaration of AI tool usage, and makes it clear that the humans driving autonomous tools are ultimately responsible for the output of those tools. The policy is currently in the final stages of getting approval from the team; we expect to roll out the policy in the next couple of weeks.

Lastly, we released our new project website. The content of this website isn't significantly different to before - but it now uses the same MkDocs tooling that we use for all our other documentation, giving us much faster builds, better translation tooling, search… and dark mode! It also includes translations to some new languages, including Japanese and Russian.

Q2 priorities¶

In Q2, we have two main priorities.

Firstly, we'll be focusing on some key improvements to Briefcase. We intend to continue improving Windows MSI installers, adding some additional customization options, and adding support for Windows on ARM64. We plan to start investigating the use of Conda environments for building Briefcase apps. Lastly, we will explore mechanisms for updating the content of an existing app without having to go through an App Store review cycle. This may also open options for "live reload" of app development.

Secondly, we plan to start executing on the "Big Picture" plan that was laid out in this quarter. That plan describes a lot of changes, so we don't anticipate completing that plan for some time. However, we're hoping to see some progress on the foundational pieces of that work, which we will build on over the course of the year.

We will also be attending PyCon US. We're presenting talks on mechanisms for distributing Python code and switching your project documentation from Sphinx to Markdown. We'll be there for both days of the sprints, as well as participating in a number of other events and generally lurking around the hallways. If you're able to make it, make sure you say hello!

Longer term goals¶

Now that we've published a plan for "Big Picture" app development, our primary long term goal is to deliver on that plan.

Along the way, we're not going to ignore Briefcase. Briefcase already solves a number of key distribution problems in the Python ecosystem; but there's a lot of opportunity to further improve alignment with Python ecosystem standards, simplify the process of developing apps, and streamline publication of apps into app stores.

However, there's only so much the core team can do by ourselves. The ultimate long term goal is to build the community of BeeWare users and developers so that the core team isn't the only source of new features and support. Part of the reason we spent time publishing a plan for Toga's future development rather than just doing the work ourselves is to enable community contribution. We hope to do more of this community-enabling work over the coming months.

2026Q1 Roadmap

russell@beeware.org (Russell Keith-Magee) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 06:15:37 +0000

In Q4, BeeWare saw wide-ranging improvements across almost all the tools we maintain, as well as the conclusion of some long-running efforts in wheel packaging. As always, this roadmap should be read as a guide to what we aim to focus on over the coming quarter, rather than a hard commitment to features that will be made available on a specific deadline.

Q4 progress¶

We have now concluded our work on iOS packaging. We contributed support for iOS to Maturin and PyO3, and have been able to successfully publish wheels for Cryptography to BeeWare's iOS wheel repository. We need to wait for a formal release of PyO3 and cffi before we can contribute patches to Cryptography, but we know the work that needs to be done.

We have added iOS to CPython's CI processes; however we haven't been able to add iOS to CPython's release artefacts. This is due to some ongoing discussions about the need to centralize the processes of producing binary dependencies, and providing SBOMs for that work. We hope to revisit this work before the 3.15 release. Work was also slowed by a large number of issues with GitHub's macOS runners. During Q4, we saw a disturbingly large number of regressions and performance issues caused by changes made by GitHub; responding to those issues consumed a lot of our time. These issues are not yet fully resolved; but we have workarounds in place that will work until later this year. We hope that GitHub will have resolved the underlying problems before those workarounds stop working.

Work on Android wheels has not proceeded as quickly as we had hoped due to the need to address some compatibility issues with the most recent Android SDK release; but we have made some progress. We hope to wrap up Android wheels work in this coming quarter.

Toga saw the addition of a completely new Qt backend - and a large proportion of the widgets on that backend have been implemented. We also published a new system-pyside6 package that allows the use of system-provided Qt bindings in an isolated Python virtual environment - this ensures that packaged Qt apps don't need to include a complete copy of Qt in order to run. We also added support for a number of GTK4 widgets, and added initial support for Adwaita (a common Gnome desktop theme) in Toga's GTK4 backend. We've also seen a large number of fixes to Toga required by the roll out of Apple's "Liquid Glass" appearance changes in macOS 26 and iOS 26. We are continuing to find and response to these edge cases as we find them.

Briefcase saw a number of significant improvements. We were able to leverage the work done by our Curtin University capstone students to significantly improve the experience of development mode for Briefcase projects. We added support for customizing the install directory, and configuring uninstall options to Windows installers. We also added a framework for integrated debugging support for packaged apps, including plugins for PDB and Visual Studio Code.

Lastly, we completed our documentation switch to Markdown, launching a new documentation landing page on the BeeWare website, converting Briefcase and Rubicon's documentation to Markdown format, adding improved machine translation workflows, and rolling out a major refresh of our contribution guides.

Q1 priorities¶

In Q1, we have three main priorities.

Firstly, we hope to wrap up work on binary packaging of wheels on Android. We hope that we'll be able to wrap up work on Android wheel packaging this quarter.

Secondly, we've had some interest from the PyScript team on using Toga's Positron layer as a mechanism for deploying PyScript apps. As a result, we'll be spending some time to improve the integration of Positron with PyScript.

Our last goal is to return our focus to Toga's native GUI capabilities, especially for mobile platforms. Over the course of this quarter, we're hoping to see progress on Table and Tree widgets (which have long been gaps on iOS and Android), as well as the start of work on notifications and high-level navigation in iOS applications. These are all completely new capability additions for Toga, so the design process will likely take some time.

Longer term goals¶

We've spent the last 2 years establishing a firm technical foundation. We've formalized iOS and Android support in CPython itself, and we've ensured that Python binary packages can be fully supported on mobile platforms. We can now turn our attention to the things we want to build on this foundation.

Our focus for the rest of this year will be to improve Toga so that it can be used for "real world" applications. We're hoping to fill out the Toga API gaps that have historically existed, and have prevented people from building useful applications. This means more widgets, more mobile-specific capabilities - and more time spent documenting and promoting what can be done with Toga.

Part of the motivation for spending time on promotion is to encourage the development of a vibrant and growing community around Toga, and BeeWare as a whole. We want to spread the excitement that we feel about BeeWare to others, welcoming new people into our community, while ensuring that when they arrive, we have a buzzing hive of BeeWare contributors ready to provide support for newcomers, share expertise with those building complex projects, fix bugs, and add yet more features as time progresses. To that end, we hope to spend more time engaging with folks in the Python ecosystem to show how they can begin their BeeWare journey.

We'll be at PyCon US 2025!

russell@beeware.org (Russell Keith-Magee) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 06:15:37 +0000

Russell and Malcolm will be attending PyCon US 2025 from May 15 - May 21, 2025!

You can find us throughout PyCon US 2025:

Russell will be hosting a tutorial entitled Building a cross-platform app with BeeWare.
Russell will be giving a talk entitled How to build a cross-platform graphical user interface with Python.
Russell and Malcolm will be hosting a sprint.

Please come say hello, we'd love to meet you. We're looking forward to seeing you there!

We'll be at PyCon UK 2025!

russell@beeware.org (Russell Keith-Magee) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 06:15:37 +0000

Russell will be attending PyCon UK 2025 from September 19 - September 22, 2025!

You can find him throughout PyCon UK 2025:

He will be giving a talk entitled How to build a cross-platform GUI app with Python.
He will be hosting a sprint.

Please come say hello, he'd love to meet you. He's looking forward to seeing you there!

We'll be at PyCon AU 2025!

russell@beeware.org (Russell Keith-Magee) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 06:15:37 +0000

Russell and Katie will be attending PyCon AU 2025 from September 12 - September 16, 2025!

You can find us throughout PyCon AU 2025:

Russell will be giving a talk entitled Taking wheels mobile.

Please come say hello, we'd love to meet you. We're looking forward to seeing you there!

We'll be at EuroPython 2025!

russell@beeware.org (Russell Keith-Magee) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 06:15:37 +0000

Russell will be attending EuroPython 2025 from July 14 - July 20, 2025!

You can find him throughout EuroPython 2025:

He will be hosting a tutorial entitled Building a cross-platform app with BeeWare.
He will be hosting a sprint.

Please come say hello, he'd love to meet you. He's looking forward to seeing you there!

September 2025 Status Update

russell@beeware.org (Russell Keith-Magee) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 06:15:37 +0000

September has been a busy month for conference travel, but we've also managed to make some important improvements to projects in the BeeWare ecosystem.

What we've done¶

We attended PyCon AU, giving a presentation about the process of creating Android and iOS wheels.
We attended the CPython core team summit at the ARM campus in Cambridge, UK. This was an opportunity to finalize work on the upcoming 3.14 release, and discuss plans for the 3.15 release cycle. We also gave a short presentation about the state of the cross-compilation ecosystem in Python.
We attended PyCon UK, giving a presentation about writing GUI apps in Python.
We made the first releases of our new cross-platform build management project, xbuild. At this point, xbuild can be used to create cross-platform virtual environments, and to drive compilation of binary wheels on iOS and Android.
We added code to CPython to manage the compilation of an iOS XCFramework artefact. This change also involved a significant reorganization of the iOS code so that other Apple backends (tvOS, watchOS, visionOS, and MacCatalyst) can be added, sharing the same XCFramework and testbed tooling. This is also an important step towards adding iOS builds to Python's CI matrix, and towards producing iOS binary artefacts as part of the CPython release process.
We added code to CPython that handles Apple's recently announced requirement for Privacy Manifests.
We updated CPython's Android CI to use the same set of test options as the other platforms.
We contributed changes to CMake improving the handling of Android Python modules.
We added an ActivityIndicator widget for Android.
We improved the size hinting of DateInput and TimeInput widgets on iOS.
We enabled focus handling on Table and Tree widgets on desktop platforms.
We investigated a number of reported issues relating to the macOS and iOS 26 releases, the rollout of the new "Liquid Glass" style, and what BeeWare needs to do in order to comply with this new style.
We continued to make progress on migrating BeeWare's documentation to use Markdown, instead of Restructured Text. A lot of the effort over the last month has related to translation tooling; but we're almost ready to switch the BeeWare tutorial over to the Markdown version. We've also made some progress on migrating Toga's documentation to Markdown. This is a much bigger project as it involves API documentation, and much more complex cross-linking relationships.
We performed some initial investigations into post-install and pre-uninstall scripting on Windows. This work should yield results in the coming month.

What's next?¶

With conference season over for another year, we'll be able to give our full focus to making improvements on BeeWare and related projects. In the next month, we're hoping to wrap up our work on adding post-install and pre scripts to Briefcase's Windows installers. October will also see the release of Python 3.14.0, and there will be some work related to finalizing BeeWare's support of that release. We also hope to start looking at the tooling for building Rust packages for iOS and Android.

Want to get involved?¶

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.

October 2025 Status Update

russell@beeware.org (Russell Keith-Magee) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 06:15:37 +0000

October saw the release of Python 3.14, which brought about a lot of release-related housekeeping. We've also seen some major improvements to BeeWare's documentation, and the addition of some useful new features in Briefcase.

What we've done¶

We completed our transition to using Markdown for all our documentation, including the tutorial, Toga, Briefcase, and Rubicon Objective-C.
In recognition of her work on the Markdown conversion, we welcomed Kattni as a new member of the core team!
Our Curtin students wrapped their year-long capstone project. This resulted in three major pieces of work: a major update to how Briefcase handles the PyScript and HTML/CSS dependencies; the introduction of a virtual environment management layer to Briefcase; and a prototype of an approach for automated testing of Toga's web backend.
Python's CI system now includes a test run on iOS. This then revealed some odd behavior on GitHub Actions that required some investigation and a workaround.
We modified CPython's Android test runner to accept all of Python's command line options, and made corresponding changes in cibuildwheel.
We corrected the handling of ctypes loading the Python library on Android and Cygwin when ABI flags are present.
We contributed a new option to cibuildwheel that allows configuration of the iOS and Android test runner.
We modified Briefcase's MSI installer handling to add support for post-install and pre-uninstall scripts, and to make the creation of a start menu item optional.
We modified how Briefcase's dev command interacts with environment variables.
We made a number of linting improvements to Briefcase, enabling more Ruff rules.
We corrected an issue with desktop icon association in GNOME apps.
We modified how we create the macOS stub app used by Briefcase. This change was necessary to ensure that Briefcase apps contain support for macOS 26 "Liquid Glass" styles.
We corrected an issue on macOS where ScrollContainer and OptionContainer would not refresh their layout while being dynamically resized.
We made a small change to the WinForms event loop that should improve performance of network-intensive code.
We landed some Toga-related upgrades to Podium, BeeWare's slide presentation app.
We completed our transition to the use of PEP 735 dependency groups across all BeeWare repositories. This means our published wheels will no longer include the list of development requirements; it also means we can retire some utility workflows that were previously required.
We added automated draft translation workflows for new tutorial content..
We upgraded all of our CI configurations to retire the use of the soon-to-be-deprecated macos-13 runner.

What's next?¶

In November, our primary focus will be on iOS and Android packaging. Rust packages will be an area of particular focus, but we're hoping to contribute some other packaging updates as well. We're also hoping to see some additional changes in Briefcase, building on the work our Curtin students have done over the year.

Want to get involved?¶

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.

November 2025 Status Update

russell@beeware.org (Russell Keith-Magee) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 06:15:37 +0000

November has been a busy month, seeing improvements in documentation, a number of improvements to Briefcase, Linux support in Toga, and the first iOS binary wheels written in Rust!

What we've done¶

We made multiple contributions to Maturin and PyO3, including a fix for iOS wheel naming strategies, adding support for iOS cross-platform virtual environments, improving the mechanism by which the build interpreter is detected when building ABI3 wheels, and ensuring libpython is linked into iOS binary wheels. As a result, we've been able to publish Rust-based iOS wheels for Cryptography to the BeeWare package repository. Once the changes to Maturin and PyO3 have been formally released, we'll be able to submit PRs adding official iOS builds to Cryptography.
We completed a large refactor of BeeWare's documentation. The BeeWare website now has a clear "Documentation" heading, and all of BeeWare's main projects serve their documentation from beeware.org subdomains.
We expanded the BeeWare tutorial to include a section on runtime icon handling.
We completed an update to Chaquopy, the tooling underpinning Briefcase's Android support, adding support for Python 3.14, as well as a number of other updates to adapt to changes in the Android ecosystem.
We released a number of Android wheels for Python 3.10, for packages which were previously only available for the end-of-life Python 3.8.
We added integration with PDB and VSCode debuggers for Briefcase apps. This allows users to use their IDE to debug Windows, Linux, macOS and iOS apps. Support for Android should be added soon. Support for PyCharm and other debuggers should also be possible given the debugging framework that has been put in place.
We added the ability to customize the install directory, and configure pre-uninstall options in Windows MSI installers.
We modified briefcase dev to install local source paths in editable mode.
We added support for a cross-platform Bluetooth permission in Briefcase apps.
We improved Python version detection when building apps on Linux.
We added a new Qt backend to Toga! This will allow Linux users with a KDE desktop to have fully native apps, instead of relying on GTK theme emulation. The Qt backend is still in development, but it already has support for a lot of simple widgets, including Button, Label, Switch and ImageView.
We added Button, TextInput, Canvas DateInput testing, and Activityindicator widgets to Toga's GTK4 implementation, as well as adding support for fonts and icons.
We added a handler for window resize events on Toga Windows.
We added support in Toga's DecimalInput for locales that use a comma as a decimal separator.
We improved Toga's WebView, ensuring that it can access SharedArrayBuffer APIs on GTK. We also modified the Positron static plugin to set headers that are necessary for using SharedArrayBuffer in an app.
We made some improvements that improve the reliability of some Toga tests.
We contributed a new feature to cibuildwheel that allows the specification of arguments to the test executor. This was primarily needed to provide a workaround for some instability in GitHub Actions, but it has the added benefit of adding configurability to some test execution functionality that was previously hard coded.
We corrected an issue with how the iOS testbed handles command-line arguments with spaces.
We made a small modification to the iOS XCFramework build process to add a lib folder. This improves compatibility of iOS XCFrameworks with traditional Unix-style build systems.

What's next?¶

December will be a short month due to end-of-year holidays; but we're still hoping to see some developments in Android packaging, an iOS package for Pandas, and some improvements to Briefcase building on the work our Curtin students have done over the course of the year. We expect to release a new version of both Briefcase and Toga in the coming week.

Want to get involved?¶

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.

May 2025 Status Update

russell@beeware.org (Russell Keith-Magee) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 06:15:37 +0000

During May, BeeWare saw a number of major improvements - many of which came as a result of our attendance at PyCon US 2025.

What we've done¶

We attended PyCon US! We gave presentations at the Language Summit and the Packaging Summit, presented a tutorial, presented in the main conference track, and spent time in the Anaconda booth demonstrating BeeWare. After all that, we ran a 3 day sprint, during which 19 new contributors earned their challenge coins, and a bunch of existing contributors returned to contribute as well. Many of the contributions described in this blog post come from PyCon US contributions.
Our proposed changes to Meson and Meson-python have all been accepted, and will be included in the next releases of those tools. There have been some other conversations with the Meson team that have led to some minor improvements in the features added to support mobile binary packaging.
We made a major set of updates to the BeeWare website, transitioning all the content to Markdown, and moving the translation infrastructure to Weblate.
We modified the Briefcase new project wizard to draw default values from a user's Git configuration, where possible
We modified Briefcase's handling of licenses to use SPDX standard abbreviations
We optimized the handling of signing on macOS to remove a redundant ad hoc signing pass when packaging an app
We improved warnings for users who have an old version of Python, which would result in them having an old version of Briefcase, but be unaware of this fact.
We modified Briefcase to use the system certificate store. This should remove a very common source of errors on some corporate-managed VPNs. We also improved error handling to provide more context for any remaining SSL or related connection errors.
We improved error messages when one of the required wheels can't be found on iOS and macOS
We corrected the events that are generated by Tables on Windows.
We improved the error handling when an app doesn't return valid window content as part of its startup method
We added a mechanism for detecting dark mode on Android
We significantly improved the handling of type annotations, allowing for Toga's lazy loading main module.
We made some modifications to the WebView widget, adding support for setting content at time of construction, and simplifying the interface for setting static content
Our student contributors have continued to work on Toga's web backend. They've added new TimeInput widget, and they've begun planning some larger contributions to Briefcase and Toga to improve the tools for testing the Web backend. There should be a blog post in a couple of weeks that details their plans for the remainder of the year.

What's next?¶

For most this year, we've been trying to get the pieces in place to support binary packaging on mobile platforms. We're now at a point where the code required to support iOS is mostly in place; and the code to support Android is almost in place; however, it will be difficult to make further progress until those changes are available in public releases.

So, in June, we'll be changing focus. We're aiming to take a look at Briefcase, with 2 major improvements in mind. Firstly, we want to upgrade our Windows packaging story, and upgrade our WiX support from WiX 3 to a current version. This should resolve some issues with packaging large apps and apps with lots of files; it should also enable us to package applications for ARM64. Secondly, we've had some requests to expose Briefcase's packaging and signing infrastructure so it can be used on projects that aren't built with Briefcase - we're hoping to add this as well.

We're also hoping to follow up on some of our discussion with the Python core team at PyCon, and begin the process of integrating the production of iOS and Android binary artefacts into Python releases. This will hopefully also involve integrating iOS and Android into CPython's pre-merge CI tooling, which will hopefully limit the incidence of changes that are landed into CPython that break iOS and Android.

Lastly, we'll continue to work on Python Emscripten support. Last month, we thought we were one issue away from a working buildbot; however, some new issues have emerged since then. We still hope to have a working buildbot before 3.14 is finalized, which will restore Emscripten to Tier 3 status.

Want to get involved?¶

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.

March 2025 Status Update

russell@beeware.org (Russell Keith-Magee) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 06:15:37 +0000

March has seen a big release for Toga, and a number of other notable improvements in the BeeWare ecosystem.

What we've done¶

Toga 0.5.0 has been released! It's been over 5 months since our last feature release of Toga; this release includes a number of major improvements to Toga's style layer, and some significant improvements in iOS and macOS memory handling. This release includes a number of backwards incompatible changes; check the Toga 0.5.0 release notes for details.
We added a new Toga-Positron bootstrap. This bootstrap is a Briefcase plugin that provides an easy way to start a new project that uses a web browser as the primary UI. This is effectively the equivalent of Electron-style apps - but the code is entirely written in Python, and works on iOS and Android. It also allows for hybrid apps: as the underlying app is a Toga app, you can mix Toga widgets into the layout that is being used. The bootstrap allows you to convert a Django website or static web server into a mobile app; it also provides a way to generate a "single site browser" - converting a single public URL into a standalone app on your desktop.
We modified the way that style properties are applied to Toga widgets. Style updates are now applied in batch updates, dramatically reducing the amount of repeated work required when changing the appearance of a widget.
We improved the UX of the WinForms Table widget, ensuring that the selected row is still visible when a table doesn't have focus.
We improved Toga's handling of the asyncio event loop on Windows. This change ensures that WinForms apps always clean up the event loop on exit; previously, it was possible for warnings to be raised on application exit, caused by open sockets and un-awaited co-routines.
We modified the handling of alignment style properties to ensure that when text direction is changed, the layout of the app is re-evaluated.
We added support for controlling inter-line spacing in multi-line text on a canvas.
We corrected some issues with background color handling on Android.
We corrected some issues with supporting PyGObject on Linux distributions that are based on Debian 12 (including Ubuntu 22.04). This was necessary because of a backwards incompatible change introduced into the PyGObject 3.52.1 release; unfortunately, users of older Linux distributions may need to make some modifications to their projects.
The pull request adding iOS support to cibuildwheel has been merged. With this change, a simple package can build binary wheels for iOS with a single command: CIBW_PLATFORM=ios cibuildwheel. This PR then required a follow-up investigation and fix to correct an intermittent issue that was seen when running the cibuildwheel tests in CI.
We've started work on a follow-up PR to cibuildwheel, adding support for explicitly declaring safe cross-build tools. This is a use case that was identified during the development of PR for iOS support.
We corrected a long standing issue with PTH file handling in Briefcase.
We added the ability to invoke briefcase build and briefcase package on a single application in a Briefcase project.
We began work on a patch to support generating iOS binary wheels for NumPy. This is a work in progress; we've got a set of patches that allows us to compile NumPy, but the test suite won't run yet.
We created a process to make an official binary release of Python for Android, which should be available on python.org starting with Python 3.14. This will reduce duplicated effort across Python on Android tools, and ensure binary compatibility in the packaging ecosystem.
We submitted pull requests adding Android support to packaging and pip.

What's next?¶

Binary packaging will continue to be an area of focus in April. In addition to finishing the work on the "safe cross-build tools" patch, we will continue to work on porting "real world" packages (like NumPy) to discover any gaps that exist in the mobile packaging story. During April, we also hope to submit a PR to support Android in cibuildwheel; and to start a discussion with the rest of the Python packaging community about the use of cross-platform build environments.

We'll also continue to work on Python Emscripten support. The Emscripten buildbot is almost ready to launch; we have one last technical issue to resolve, and then we'll be able to add Emscripten to the CPython buildbot fleet.

There's also good news for Toga's Web backend - a group of students from Curtin University will be working on Toga's web backend as part of their final year capstone project. This will include making modifications to Briefcase to support testing web-based apps. Some of the improvements to Toga and Briefcase that landed this month are the result of those students becoming familiar with BeeWare's contribution process. This project will run until the end of the year; we look forward to seeing the progress they're able to make.

Looking a little further ahead - in May, we'll be attending PyCon US! We're presenting a talk and a tutorial; and we'll be there for the first 3 days of the sprints. We'll have a presence at the Anaconda booth in the main hall; we'll be attending other events (such as the language summit) during the conference; and we're hoping to plan some open spaces. Ticket sales are open - we hope to see you there!

Want to get involved?¶

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.

June 2025 Status Update

russell@beeware.org (Russell Keith-Magee) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 06:15:37 +0000

June has been a busy month, with some big improvements to BeeWare's websites and documentation, and some major milestones reached in our work on mobile packaging.

What we've done¶

cibuildwheel 3.0 has been released - including iOS support! As a result, we've been able to submit pull requests for lru-dict and Pillow, proposing the addition of iOS support. Work on adding Android support is still underway.
An Emscripten CPython buildbot is now live! The buildbot is currently failing 2 tests; but having a buildbot at all is a major step towards restoring Tier-3 support, and will help detect regressions on Emscripten as a platform.
We've started a big review of the structure of our documentation, with a view to resolving a number of inconsistencies between platforms. This review will also involve a visual refresh, making BeeWare docs have a style consistent with the homepage; and improvements to how the documentation for BeeWare's individual projects fit into the overall BeeWare website.
We added iCloud detection to Briefcase. iCloud Drive synchronization adds metadata to some folders that prevents signing infrastructure from working; this has been a recurring source of problems during tutorials.
We massively improved file type associations for macOS. Briefcase previously supported macOS file associations, but expressed some very specific opinions on how files would be used. With these new improvements, it should be possible to support almost any macOS file type association requirements that an application might have.
We modified Briefcase so it can package, sign and notarize applications that weren't built with Briefcase. We've spent a lot of time automating the processes for building installers, and for managing signing and notarization - and almost none of that work depends on using Briefcase to build the app being packaged. With these modifications, you can now point Briefcase at an app that was built with a different tool, and Briefcase will manage the packaging and signing that is required.
We've started the process of upgrading Briefcase to use a newer version of WiX for Windows MSI packaging.
We added a Slider widget to the Web backend.
We added a DateInput widget to the iOS and macOS backends.
We added a TimeInput widget to the iOS and macOS backends.
We added an ActivityIndicator widget to the WinForms backend.
We modified the handling of Toga app paths so that requesting a path guarantees that it exists. This is a significant improvement to user experience, as it's no longer necessary to "check and create" every time you access an app path.
We resolved a long-standing instability in the macOS and iOS testbed app that caused intermittent failures in the WebView tests
We added a new topic guide on managing file system access in Toga apps.
We modified the handling of font specifications in Toga apps. You can now provide a list of fonts, as you would in CSS, and the first available font in that list will be used.
We corrected a number of issues with document-based apps. This was detected while upgrading Podium, BeeWare's slide presentation tool, to use a recent version of Toga.
Our Curtin students delivered their mid-year report - including plans for the work they're intending to complete in the second half of the year.
We completed the process of migrating BeeWare's core projects to use Ruff, rather than a combination of flake8, sort, pyupgrade, and more.

What's next?¶

With the public release of cibuildwheel 3.0, we've been able to start submitting pull requests upstream for projects to officially support iOS. In July, we'll continue that work, with the aim of having some official iOS wheels for major projects that aren't published by BeeWare. We'll also continue working on adding Android support to cibuildwheel, with the hope that it will be included in version 3.1.

We're also hoping to start the process of integrating the production of iOS and Android binary artefacts into Python releases. This will hopefully also involve integrating iOS and Android into CPython's pre-merge CI tooling, which will hopefully limit the incidence of changes that are landed into CPython that break iOS and Android.

We'll also be attending EuroPython, where we will be giving a tutorial, attending the WebAssembly summit, and running a BeeWare sprint. If you can make it to Prague in July, tickets are still available - we hope to see you there!

Want to get involved?¶

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.

July 2025 Status Update

russell@beeware.org (Russell Keith-Magee) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 06:15:37 +0000

In July, BeeWare hit some more major milestones in our work on mobile packaging - but we also found time to make some improvements to other parts of BeeWare.

What we've done¶

We attended EuroPython, where we gave a tutorial and a talk, attended the WebAssembly summit, and ran a sprint - at which we gave out 25 BeeWare challenge coins to first-time contributors.
cibuildwheel 3.1 has been released - which includes support for building Android wheels! As a result, we've been able to submit a pull request for lru-dict; we're expecting to submit Android support PRs for other projects in the coming months.
We started the process of adding Android builds to CPython's CI. This also means we're in a position to generate Android release artefacts as part of the release process - possibly as soon as Python 3.14.
The Emscripten buildbot is now passing all tests! This formally restores Emscripten to the Tier-3 support level.
Pillow 11.3.0 has been released, including official iOS wheels.
We submitted a pull request to add iOS support for NumPy. This PR is waiting on a release of meson-python before it can be submitted for review, but it is passing the NumPy test suite.
Briefcase has been updated to use WiX 5.0. This enabled us to resolve a number of issues related to MSI support, including resolving an issue with long file names in packaged content.
We added support for port forwarding when running Android apps. This will be used as part of adding debugger support to Briefcase.
We added a new topic guide on publishing apps to the macOS App Store.
We improved a number of error messages generated by Briefcase, providing more guidance on how to run an iOS app on a device, problems that can be caused by virus scanners, and how to resolve inconsistent file content in macOS wheels.
We reviewed our contribution guides for Briefcase and Toga to remove inconsistencies in the contribution experience.
We added a DateInput widget to Toga's GTK backend.
We completed a review of Toga's example code to ensure that they all run without warnings, and use the current preferred syntax for describing styles.
We corrected the naming of the wheel for Toga's WinForms backend to reflect that it contains a platform-specific binary.
We added a shorthand property for defining all the features of a widget's font in one declaration.
We simplified Toga's color representations to be better aligned with CSS color interpretations.
We refactored Toga's font handling so that font loading logic (and, in particular, error handling) is consistent across platforms.

What's next?¶

With cibuildwheel now supporting both iOS and Android, our work on binary packaging can now shift fully to the upstream projects that will use cibuildwheel to produce wheels. Over the coming months, we expect to submit PRs to more upstream projects; we're also planning to look at packaging that doesn't use cibuildwheel (such as Rust-based packages that use Maturin for packaging). We're also going to start documenting what we've learned about binary packaging for iOS and Android, so that the wider community can start contributing iOS and Android recipes.

We're also going to continue the process of integrating the production of iOS and Android binary artefacts into Python's CI and release processes. We've already begun this process for Android; iOS requires a little more preparatory work, which will be a major area of focus in August.

Lastly, we're planning to look at adding post-install scripts to Briefcase installers. We'll be focusing on Windows installers initially; but the intention is that any changes we implement could also be implemented on macOS or Linux.

Want to get involved?¶

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.