Discord is finally giving up on Electron, the cross-platform framework that allows developers to create desktop applications using web technologies. Electron web apps consume a lot of system resources, 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
Vishnevskiy also shared an image of the Windows Discord client using only 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 with the current Windows application.
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.”
