Chromium Embedded Framework


The Chromium Embedded Framework is an open-source software framework for embedding a Chromium web browser within another application. This enables developers to add web browsing functionality to their application, as well as the ability to use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create the application's user interface.
CEF runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows. It has many language bindings including C, C++, C#, Go, Java, and Python.

Overview

There are two versions of Chromium Embedded Framework: CEF 1 and CEF 3. Development of CEF 2 was abandoned after the appearance of the Chromium Content API.
CEF 1 is a single-process implementation based on the Chromium WebKit API. It is no longer actively developed or supported.
CEF 3 is a multi-process implementation based on the Chromium Content API and has performance similar to Google Chrome. It uses asynchronous messaging to communicate between the main application process and one or more render processes. It supports PPAPI plugins and extensions, both internal or externally loadable.
The single-process run mode is not supported, but still present; currently is being used for debugging purposes only.
On March 16, 2019, the CEF version numbering changed with the release of CEF 73.1.3+g46cf800+chromium-73.0.3683.75. The previous release on March 14, 2019 was CEF 3.3683.1920.g9f41a27. Both of these releases were based on Chromium 73.0.3683.75, however the new version numbering has the major number the same as the Chromium major version number it is based on.
CEF comes with a sample application called CefClient that is written in C++ using WinAPI, Cocoa, or GTK and contains demos of various features. Newer versions include a sample application called CefSimple that, along with an accompanying tutorial, show how to create a simple application using CEF 3.
Documentation can be found in the header files located in the "include" directory and on wiki pages.
Spotify maintains branches builds for Linux, Mac and Windows in 32- and 64-bit forms.

Supported languages

The base CEF framework includes support for the C and C++ programming languages, but there are external projects that provide bindings for other languages: