--- title: Why I think Immediate Mode GUI is way to go for GameDev... description: An argument for why Immediate Mode GUI (IMGUI), specifically dear-imgui, is better suited than traditional retained-mode frameworks like Qt or WPF for building... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/why-i-think-immediate-mode-gui-is-way-to-go-for-gamedev-tools-3vjciox3e twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Why I think Immediate Mode GUI is way to go for GameDev tools | daily.dev og:description: An argument for why Immediate Mode GUI (IMGUI), specifically dear-imgui, is better suited than traditional retained-mode frameworks like Qt or WPF for building... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/why-i-think-immediate-mode-gui-is-way-to-go-for-gamedev-tools-3vjciox3e og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/3vJciOX3e.png og:image:alt: Why I think Immediate Mode GUI is way to go for GameDev tools og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Why I think Immediate Mode GUI is way to go for GameDev tools **[Overview — bgfx 1.146.9292 documentation](https://daily.dev/sources/bkaradzic)** · 10 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary An argument for why Immediate Mode GUI (IMGUI), specifically dear-imgui, is better suited than traditional retained-mode frameworks like Qt or WPF for building internal game development tools UI. The author contrasts the productivity trade-offs of large frameworks (rich built-in utilities, but domain knowledge silos, ownership churn, and engine/UI integration friction) against IMGUI's simplicity, hardware-accelerated custom widgets, ease of engine embedding, and resilience to abandonment. Weaknesses of IMGUI are also covered, including poor extension ecosystems, mobile power draw, and lack of internationalization support, alongside links to related postmortems and example projects. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Why would a game studio choose an immediate mode GUI like dear-imgui over Qt for building internal editor tools? Immediate mode GUI avoids the domain-knowledge silo that forms around large frameworks like Qt, letting engine programmers write their own editor tools without deep UI-framework expertise. It also produces hardware-accelerated custom widgets with far less code than Qt equivalents (compare Qt hex editor implementations against a dear-imgui hex editor gist), embeds directly into the engine's renderer without interop workarounds, and is simple enough for a small team to maintain if the original library's author abandons it. _Weighing UI architecture trade-offs for game tooling is easier with daily.dev surfacing engineering perspectives like this._ ### What are the downsides of using dear-imgui instead of a framework like Qt for tools development? Dear-imgui lacks the built-in utilities frameworks like Qt provide out of the box, such as QDir or QFileInfo, forcing teams to write their own base libraries early on. It also has no well-structured system for contributing widget extensions back to the library, redraws the whole screen constantly which hurts mobile power efficiency, and has no native internationalization support. _Developers comparing GUI toolkit trade-offs can track deeper technical takes like this on daily.dev._ --- Tags: [#game-development](https://daily.dev/tags/game-development), [#c++](https://daily.dev/tags/c++), [#qt](https://daily.dev/tags/qt) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/why-i-think-immediate-mode-gui-is-way-to-go-for-gamedev-tools-3vjciox3e) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Why I think Immediate Mode GUI is way to go for GameDev tools","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/why-i-think-immediate-mode-gui-is-way-to-go-for-gamedev-tools-3vjciox3e","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/why-i-think-immediate-mode-gui-is-way-to-go-for-gamedev-tools-3vjciox3e"},"datePublished":"2026-08-23T12:17:03.683Z","dateModified":"2026-08-23T12:19:44.262Z","description":"An argument for why Immediate Mode GUI (IMGUI), specifically dear-imgui, is better suited than traditional retained-mode frameworks like Qt or WPF for building...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/4449d74740e59ba2e5a38d7ecc1c3d4e?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/4449d74740e59ba2e5a38d7ecc1c3d4e?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Overview — bgfx 1.146.9292 documentation","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Overview — bgfx 1.146.9292 documentation","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/logos/placeholder.jpg","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/bkaradzic"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/why-i-think-immediate-mode-gui-is-way-to-go-for-gamedev-tools-3vjciox3e","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"game-development,c++,qt","timeRequired":"PT10M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Overview — bgfx 1.146.9292 documentation","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/bkaradzic"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Why I think Immediate Mode GUI is way to go for GameDev tools"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/why-i-think-immediate-mode-gui-is-way-to-go-for-gamedev-tools-3vjciox3e#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Why would a game studio choose an immediate mode GUI like dear-imgui over Qt for building internal editor tools?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Immediate mode GUI avoids the domain-knowledge silo that forms around large frameworks like Qt, letting engine programmers write their own editor tools without deep UI-framework expertise. 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