These libraries can extend the core SDL functionality.
Please note that several of these have names that start with "SDL_", but none of them are part of the core SDL library. They are separate and optional extras!
Dear ImGui is a bloat-free graphical user interface library for C++. It outputs optimized vertex buffers that you can render anytime in your 3D-pipeline-enabled application. It is fast, portable, renderer agnostic, and self-contained (no external dependencies).
RmlUi is the C++ user interface package based on the HTML and CSS standards, designed as a complete solution for any project's interface needs. It is a fork of the libRocket project, introducing new features, bug fixes, and performance improvements.
Provides the basic drawing functions such as lines, circles or polygons.
Loads images as SDL surfaces and textures, and supports the following formats: BMP, GIF, JPEG, LBM, PCX, PNG, PNM, QOI, SVG, TGA, TIFF, WEBP, XCF, XPM, XV (and more!)
SDL_mixer is a sample multi-channel audio mixer library. It supports any number of simultaneously playing channels of 16 bit stereo audio, plus a single channel of music, mixed by the popular FLAC, MikMod MOD, Timidity MIDI, Ogg Vorbis, and SMPEG MP3 libraries.
SDL_mixer works with SDL3 but we intend to update the API significantly for a 3.0 release.
If you don't need the fancy mixing capabilities of SDL_mixer and just want to load some more sound file formats, SDL_sound might be for you!
SDL_sound is a library that handles the decoding of several popular sound file formats, such as .WAV and .MP3. It is meant to make the programmer's sound playback tasks simpler. The programmer gives SDL_sound a filename, or feeds it data directly from one of many sources, and then reads the decoded waveform data back at her leisure.
A library which allows you to use TrueType fonts in your SDL applications. It comes with an example program "showfont" which displays an example string for a given TrueType font file.
A small cross-platform networking library.
SDL_net works with SDL3 and we have some more polish work to do for a 3.0 release.
A library for translating shaders to different formats. Intended for use with the GPU API.