GTK 4 Toolkit's New OpenGL Renderer Is Maturing Well

The new OpenGL renderer work for GTK 4 as a post-4.0 improvement is shaping up well and should really help push along the open-source toolkit on macOS.

Well known GNOME developer Christian Hergert of Red Hat has been working on effectively a new OpenGL renderer with a particular focus on helping the macOS support but obviously benefits all GL platforms as well.

While macOS has Vulkan support by way of MoltenVK and with GTK 4.0 there is an early Vulkan renderer, Hergert noted in a blog post how right now "it's a giant maze" when trying to use MoltenVK on macOS.

For now the OpenGL renderer is the best means of GTK 4 acceleration on macOS even with Apple having deprecated OpenGL, it doesn't look like it will disappear anytime soon. This new OpenGL renderer is also opening up rendering improvements moving forward. Additionally, this new "NGL" renderer may serve as a template for writing an Apple Metal renderer for GTK 4 in the future should anyone be interested.

Those curious about this OpenGL "NGL" renderer work for GTK 4 can see Christian's blog for the interesting remarks.