Getting Started with Qt

Install Qt

You can install the Qt Framework and tools by using an online or offline installer or by building the source packages yourself.

In the online installer, you can select commercial or open source versions of Qt, tools, and Add-On components to install. Using the online installer requires signing in to your Qt Account. The installer retrieves the license attached to the account from a server and provides a list of available components corresponding to the license.

An offline installer is a single package that contains all of Qt and Add-Ons relevant for a target platform. Users with a commercial license can either sign in with their Qt account or with their Qt license key during the installation process. The license key is available in the Qt Account Web portal.

You can download Qt 5 installers from the Downloads page.

You can use the Qt installers to download and install the following components:

  • Qt libraries, prebuilt for a particular development platform (operating system and compiler)
  • Qt Creator integrated development environment (IDE)
  • Reference Documentation and examples
  • Qt in source code form (needed only if you want to build the framework and tools yourself)
  • Add-On components that are relevant for different platforms

After downloading, start the installer like any executable on the development platform.

To run the installer, you need a Qt Account. You can use your Qt Account credentials to sign-in to all Qt services, including the forums and wiki. If you do not already have a Qt Account, you can create one during the installation process.

To complete the installation, select the components that you want to install and follow the instructions of the installation program.

Use the Maintenance Tool under <install_dir> to add components and to update or remove installed components.

Platform Requirements

Developing applications on different platforms are covered in the platform pages.

For more information, visit the supported platforms page.

Create Your First Applications

Learn the basics of Qt and Qt Quick development by following two tutorials that illustrate how to create simple applications and build and run them on target platforms:

For a more thorough walkthrough of the different aspects of developing applications with Qt 5, see the QML Book. It focuses on Qt Quick, but also provides the information needed to use QML together with C++.

Explore Qt

We invite you to explore the rest of Qt. We prepared overviews which help you decide which APIs to use and our examples demonstrate how to use them.

To view a list of all Qt examples, visit the List of Qt Examples page.

Setting Up Projects

Developing with Qt Creator

Reference Documentation

Qt Project Community

Qt's vibrant and active community site, http://qt.io houses a wiki, a forum, and additional learning guides and presentations.

© 2017 The Qt Company Ltd. Documentation contributions included herein are the copyrights of their respective owners. The documentation provided herein is licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.3 as published by the Free Software Foundation. Qt and respective logos are trademarks of The Qt Company Ltd. in Finland and/or other countries worldwide. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.