Discord is finally giving up on Electron, the cross-platform framework that allows developers to create desktop applications using web technologies. Electron web apps are notoriously resource-intensive, and Discord is now moving its desktop app entirely to Rust, a modern programming language designed for speed and memory safety. “We have been early adopters of Rust since 2018 and much of our infrastructure, voice technology and even some of the current clients are already Rust, the holy grail was to get the entire client there,” explains Discord CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy in a post on X. “That means Electron disappears, and so does it.” React Native, the mobile device maintains the native UI but shares the app code with the desktop via Rust.” Vishnevskiy also shared an image of the Windows Discord client using just 290 MB of RAM, which is a clear improvement since you only have to participate in a few servers and RAM usage can easily reach 1 GB or more using the current Windows app. It’s unclear when Discord will make the full switch to Rust, but Vishnevskiy says the company “hopes to be able to test it with users soon.”
