Discord Is Ditching Electron For Rust
Discord is replacing Electron with a desktop client built fully in Rust, which the company says should significantly reduce the app's notoriously high resource usage while improving performance and memory safety. "We've been early adopters of Rust since 2018 and a lot of our infra, voice tech, and even some of the current client is already Rust, the holy grail was getting the whole client there,"…
Discord is transitioning away from Electron and moving towards a desktop client built entirely in Rust, according to the company. This change is expected to significantly reduce the app's resource usage, enhance performance, and improve memory safety. The company has been utilizing Rust since 2018, with various aspects of their infrastructure, voice technology, and the current client already written in Rust.
The ultimate goal is to fully integrate Rust into the client, as explained by Discord's Chief Technology Officer, Stanislav Vishnevskiy. In a post on X, Vishnevskiy revealed that once Electron and React Native are removed, the mobile app will continue to share app code with desktop via Rust. An image shared by Vishnevskiy displayed a Discord Windows client using only 290MB of RAM, a marked improvement over the current Windows app which can consume up to 1GB or more depending on the number of servers involved.
While the exact timeline for the full switch to Rust remains unclear, Vishnevskiy indicated that the company hopes to begin testing the new client with users soon.
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