Tauri Explained: Tiny Desktop Apps From Web Code
Introduction Electron (the batch 23 post) put web developers on the desktop — at the cost of shipping a whole Chromium browser inside every app, with large downloads and heavy memory use. Tauri, released in 2020, offers the same promise with a fraction of the weight: build desktop apps from web frontend code, but use the operating system's own webview for rendering and a Rust backend for system access. The result is apps measured in megabytes, not hundreds of megabytes, with a security model designed around least privilege. Webview frontend, Rust backend, and capabilities Tauri splits the app like Electron does, but with different pieces: Frontend — any web framework (React, Vue, Svelte, or plain HTML) running in the system's webview: WebKit on macOS, WebView2 on Windows, WebKitGTK on Linux. No bundled Chromium. Backend — Rust code that handles system access: files, windows, menus, notifications, and shell commands, exposed to the frontend through a command API. Capabili...