Zebkit – Chromium as an embeddable library

Your application can now include a full Chromium browser engine and PDF viewer without shipping a separate browser or using Electron.

Zebkit has released a new library that allows developers to embed the Chromium browser engine directly into their applications. Unlike Electron, which bundles a full runtime, Zebkit provides core Chromium components like Blink, V8, PDFium, and FFmpeg as a single library. This allows developers to integrate web rendering, PDF viewing, and media playback capabilities into applications built with C, C++, Rust, Python, or Go, maintaining their own processes and toolkits. The library offers an API for these components, supporting various functionalities including PDF editing, media saving, and native UI generation from JavaScript. It also includes Playwright's API for automation, aiming for faster execution than traditional methods. Zebkit is designed to be lighter and faster than Electron, with a smaller footprint and quicker startup times. It operates within the application's event loop and draws into its own windows, offering a more integrated approach.

Zebkit's approach represents a significant shift for developers needing web or PDF capabilities within native applications. By providing Chromium as a linked library rather than a separate runtime like Electron, Zebkit offers a drastically reduced application size and memory footprint. This allows for more control over the application's process and toolkit, enabling deeper integration of web functionalities as if they were just another native component, akin to adding SQLite. The extensive API for PDFium, including advanced editing features, and the ability to save media as it plays, further enhance the utility for applications that require robust document handling and media streaming.

The inclusion of Playwright's API directly within the engine, offering significant speedups over remote execution, positions Zebkit as a powerful tool for building automated testing agents and other applications that require programmatic control over web content. This integration bypasses the need for separate drivers or CDP connections, streamlining the development process for automation. By exposing Chromium's core components and providing fine-grained control over permissions and system integrations, Zebkit empowers developers to create leaner, faster, and more deeply integrated applications that leverage the full power of the web platform without the overhead of traditional browser embedding frameworks.