Compressor (Native SDK)

_{App icon from Thiings — free for personal / non-commercial use; attribution required.}

Full native desktop image compressor — no WebView, no React, no browser UI.

• UI: src/app.native (Native markup)
• Logic: src/main.zig (Model / Msg / update_fx)
• Encode: Bun Bun.file(…).image().webp({ quality }) via fx.spawn
• Platforms: macOS and Windows

Features

• Browse (platform file dialog) or drop an image
• Convert any common image → WebP
• Quality slider in settings (default 80%)
• Presets: Light 90 · Medium 80 · Heavy 50
• Shortcuts: ⌘/, / Ctrl+, settings · ⌘O / Ctrl+O browse · ⌘Enter / Ctrl+Enter compress
• Window title: centered on macOS, start-aligned on Windows

Requirements

• Zig 0.16 — or let native dev --yes download the pinned toolchain into ~/.native/toolchains/
• Bun 1.4+ on PATH (used for compression)
• @native-sdk/cli (npm install -g @native-sdk/cli)
• Node.js (for the Native CLI)

macOS

• macOS 11+ with Xcode Command Line Tools / Xcode
• AppKit host with the software GPU surface backend
• File picker via osascript (choose file)

Windows

• Win32 host with the software GPU surface backend
• On high-DPI displays the app opts into Per-Monitor V2 DPI awareness at startup so the canvas rasterizes at the real device scale (e.g. 1.25× / 1.5× / 2×) instead of letting Windows stretch a 1× bitmap

Do not run from WSL / Linux shells. native dev on Linux looks for GTK4 / WebKit and will fail with unable to find dynamic system library 'gtk4'. Use Windows PowerShell or cmd in the Windows checkout of this repo.

Setup

macOS

npm install -g @native-sdk/cli
# Bun: https://bun.sh — then confirm:
bun --version
native --version
# Optional: install Zig yourself, or let native download it:
# brew install zig   # or https://ziglang.org/download/

Windows

Open PowerShell (not WSL / zsh) in this project directory:

# Zig 0.16 must be on PATH. On Windows, `native` may not auto-download it.
winget install -e --id zig.zig
# Or run the helper (downloads 0.16.0 into %LOCALAPPDATA%\zig-0.16.0 and updates user PATH):
#   powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\scripts\setup-windows-zig.ps1

npm install -g @native-sdk/cli
# Bun: https://bun.sh — then confirm:
zig version   # expect 0.16.x
bun --version
native --version

If PowerShell blocks native (running scripts is disabled), either:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "native dev --yes"

or allow local scripts for your user:

Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser RemoteSigned

Commands

Run these in the same shell as setup (macOS Terminal, or Windows PowerShell — not WSL):

# Validate markup
native check
native markup check src/app.native

# Unit tests (headless)
native test

# Run (native window + hot reload of app.native)
native dev
# First run / CI: skip Zig download prompts
native dev --yes

# Release binary
native build

# Distributable package (run on the target OS)
native package --target macos --signing adhoc --binary zig-out/bin/compressor --output zig-out/package/Compressor.app
native package --target windows --binary zig-out/bin/compressor.exe --output zig-out/package/windows

Releases (GitHub Actions)

Ship via GitHub Releases — same pattern as gifbin: tag a version, CI builds native packages, and softprops/action-gh-release attaches the zips.

# bump app.zon if needed, then:
git tag v0.1.0
git push origin v0.1.0

Or run Actions → Release → Run workflow and pass a version without the leading v.

Artifact	Runner
Compressor-macos-arm64.zip (.app inside)	macos-15
Compressor-windows-x64.zip (.exe layout)	windows-latest
SHA256SUMS + per-file .sha256	release job

macOS: ad-hoc signed — first open with right-click → Open. Windows: unsigned — SmartScreen may warn. Both still need Bun on PATH for compression.

Bun encoder (CLI)

bun run scripts/compress.ts --input photo.png --output photo.webp --quality 80
bun test scripts/compress.test.ts

Project layout

app.zon                       # app identity, window, shortcuts (macos + windows)
src/app.native                # declarative native UI
src/main.zig                  # Model / Msg / update_fx / effects
src/tests.zig                 # dispatch + markup tests
scripts/compress.ts           # Bun WebP encode
scripts/set-version.sh        # bump app.zon .version for CI releases
scripts/setup-windows-zig.ps1 # optional Zig 0.16 install + PATH (Windows)
.github/workflows/release.yml # tag → macOS + Windows GitHub Release
assets/icon.png

Zero-config: no frontend/, no build.zig — the native CLI owns the build graph.