Simple DirectMedia Layer 3.0

This is the SDL3 wiki. SDL2 is over here!

Try it right now!

SDL3 has officially stabilized the API and ABI, and a preview release is available at the GitHub page. We will still be adding things to the API but not changing or removing anything, so it's safe to start porting your projects from SDL2.

Need some motivation? Here's a list of New Features that you can enjoy today in SDL3!

What is it?

Simple DirectMedia Layer is a cross-platform development library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, and graphics hardware via OpenGL/Direct3D/Metal/Vulkan. It is used by video playback software, emulators, and popular games including Valve's award winning catalog and many Humble Bundle games.

SDL officially supports Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android, and several other platforms.

SDL is written in C, works natively with C++, and has bindings available for several other languages, including C#, Python, and Rust.

SDL 3.0 (often shortened to "SDL3") is distributed under the zlib license. This license allows you to use SDL freely in any software.

This is the SDL wiki; SDL's main website is libsdl.org.

This wiki is your portal to documentation and other resources for SDL 3.0.

Using the SDL documentation Wiki

• Source Code: How to download the source code to SDL.
• Installation: How to install SDL on your platform of choice and link your program against it.

API references

The official documentation for the API. Look here to find detailed information about the functions, structures, enumerations and macros.

• API by category
• Complete API index
• All functions
• All datatypes
• All structures/unions
• All enums
• All macros

Other sources of information

• Want to learn about a feature in SDL you haven't used before? Our tutorials are great place to get started!
• Here is a collection of articles that have been written about SDL3.
• Here is a collection of external libraries, to extend SDL functionality.
• Looking for more information than you can get online? Check out the books list.
• A few of the most commonly asked questions about using SDL are answered in the FAQs section.
• We have forums/mailing lists for talking with other humans, and of course, a Discord server. Both are great places to keep up with the latest news, help other users out, and ask questions.

Other stuff

We hope you find everything you are looking for and enjoy using SDL!

If anything is not addressed somewhere here, feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request.

Enjoy!