Over the last 8 months, I've been building a native HTTP client for Windows and macOS called ReqKit.
The project started because I was looking for an API tool that felt more like a traditional desktop application than a web application packaged as a desktop app.
I was interested in exploring what could be achieved by relying primarily on the operating system itself: native UI toolkits, native networking APIs, and a minimal dependency footprint.
As an experiment, I decided to build the application directly on top of:
- Win32 on Windows
- Cocoa on macOS
using C11 as the common foundation.
The result is a native desktop application focused on REST API testing and JSON workflows, without requiring accounts, cloud services, or external infrastructure.
One of the most interesting parts of the project has been discovering how much modern desktop software can still be built using operating-system APIs directly, without adding layers of frameworks, runtimes, or large dependency trees.
I'd be curious to hear from developers who are still building native desktop software today.
Links:
- Project website: https://reqkit-app.github.io/
