{"slug": "electron", "name": "Electron", "category": "dev-libs", "category_name": "Libraries and frameworks", "description": "Framework for building cross-platform desktop apps using JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Chromium and Node.js.", "recommenders": 7, "commenters": 37, "warners": 21, "score": -10.476, "rising": 1.69, "first": "2025-11-24", "latest": "2026-10-23", "why": "Recommended by developers who moved off Tauri or Go for more reliable cross-platform behavior and a faster, smoother development experience.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 7, "neutral": 8, "compare": 2, "warn": 21}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 1, 1, 2, 0, 1], "listed": true, "loved": ["Reliable rendering", "Developer experience"], "caveat": "Bloat", "short_quote": "we were also pleasantly surprised by how much better the development experience is with it.", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": "github.com/gitbutlerapp/gitbutler", "official_url": "https://www.electronjs.org", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["Electron"], "verdict": [{"text": "Recommended by developers who moved off Tauri or Go for more reliable cross-platform behavior", "cites": [{"id": 775799857, "item_id": 48487491, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48487491", "by": "videlov", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "we were also pleasantly surprised by how much better the development experience is with it.", "excerpt": "Surprised to see they kept Tauri. In our experience of using Tauri, it has been a significant source of compatibility and performance issues related to it's use of WebKit and WebKitGTK. So much so that we have started an effort of migrating away from it for our app, in favor of Electron (https://github.com/gitbutlerapp/gitbutler/tree/master/apps/lite) The choice was made specifically for the benefit of our users, but", "context": "builds GitButler", "use_case": "desktop app framework", "switched_from": "Tauri", "story": "The Conductor Rewrite: What They Changed to Make It Fast"}, {"id": 755945441, "item_id": 47246590, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47246590", "by": "moogly", "date": "2026-03-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "for my next stuff I'm probably going to use Electron as well since you can embed the webview", "excerpt": "I have also used Tauri for one of my private apps, and using the OS's webview just doesn't work for me, so for my next stuff I'm probably going to use Electron as well since you can embed the webview. Yeah, it's bloated, but I'm so tired of things not working properly on Wayland without disabling this and that with random env vars and not able to do a fully OOTB single portable AppImage build on Linux. I can either m", "context": "", "use_case": "cross-platform desktop apps", "switched_from": "Tauri", "story": "Claude is an Electron App because we've lost native"}, {"id": 755844641, "item_id": 47240290, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47240290", "by": "TimFogarty", "date": "2026-03-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I think for my next project I will actually go back to electron.", "excerpt": "I have been using Tauri for a macOS app I'm making[1] and it has been great. The app is only 11MB and I've had most of the APIs I'd need. However, there are still some rough edges that have been annoying to work with. I think for my next project I will actually go back to electron. There are two issues that caused me pain: 1. I can't use Playwright to run e2e tests on the tauri app itself. That's because the webview ", "context": "Building a macOS app", "use_case": "next desktop app", "switched_from": "Tauri", "story": "Claude is an Electron App because we've lost native"}, {"id": 778832482, "item_id": 48677030, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48677030", "by": "phaser", "date": "2026-06-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "for Linux and Windows we use Electron", "excerpt": "I am the freaky outlier that's actually excited about this. My city builder game, Microlandia[1], runs on Deno. The game's graphics and UI is a Three.js/React app, but the real guts of the game are a \"sidecar\" process that is a `deno compile` typescript executable. On Mac, there's a Tauri shell that runs both client and server, and for Linux and Windows we use Electron, (Tauri proved to be quite problematic except wh", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop shell", "switched_from": "Tauri", "story": "Deno 2.9"}, {"id": 736517568, "item_id": 46032348, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46032348", "by": "mnafees", "date": "2025-11-24", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "We eventually abandoned the Go approach and switched to Electron.", "excerpt": "We built a background daemon as a macOS menu bar app in Go, and the performance was surprisingly bad. The Go bindings for native UI frameworks ended up being massive RAM hogs. When we profiled it, we found that the GC essentially gave up under load, which explained why customers were reporting a simple menu bar app consuming 2.5GB+ of RAM on their Macs. We eventually abandoned the Go approach and switched to Electron", "context": "Qt C++ background, built a macOS menu bar app", "use_case": "macOS menu bar app", "switched_from": "", "story": "Build desktop applications using Go and Web Technologies"}]}, {"text": " and a faster, smoother development experience.", "cites": [{"id": 775799857, "item_id": 48487491, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48487491", "by": "videlov", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "we were also pleasantly surprised by how much better the development experience is with it.", "excerpt": "Surprised to see they kept Tauri. In our experience of using Tauri, it has been a significant source of compatibility and performance issues related to it's use of WebKit and WebKitGTK. So much so that we have started an effort of migrating away from it for our app, in favor of Electron (https://github.com/gitbutlerapp/gitbutler/tree/master/apps/lite) The choice was made specifically for the benefit of our users, but", "context": "builds GitButler", "use_case": "desktop app framework", "switched_from": "Tauri", "story": "The Conductor Rewrite: What They Changed to Make It Fast"}, {"id": 736517568, "item_id": 46032348, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46032348", "by": "mnafees", "date": "2025-11-24", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "We eventually abandoned the Go approach and switched to Electron.", "excerpt": "We built a background daemon as a macOS menu bar app in Go, and the performance was surprisingly bad. The Go bindings for native UI frameworks ended up being massive RAM hogs. When we profiled it, we found that the GC essentially gave up under load, which explained why customers were reporting a simple menu bar app consuming 2.5GB+ of RAM on their Macs. We eventually abandoned the Go approach and switched to Electron", "context": "Qt C++ background, built a macOS menu bar app", "use_case": "macOS menu bar app", "switched_from": "", "story": "Build desktop applications using Go and Web Technologies"}, {"id": 782738064, "item_id": 48921129, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48921129", "by": "lordofgibbons", "date": "2026-07-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's doubtful those apps would have been created in the first place if it wasn't for the speedup of development allowed by ElectronJS.", "excerpt": "It's similar to the ElectronJS desktop app problem. Sure the desktop apps use a lot more system resources, but it's doubtful those apps would have been created in the first place if it wasn't for the speedup of development allowed by ElectronJS. In this case, sure software is buggier, but there's also a ton more software+features that wouldn't have existed before AI coding tools.", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop app development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Is it just me, or is software buggier across the board?"}, {"id": 791702912, "item_id": 49481432, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49481432", "by": "carloslfu", "date": "2026-08-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "My best advice is JUST USE ELECTRON.", "excerpt": "Tauri is solid, but after 10 years of navigating the space and shipping desktop apps. My best advice is JUST USE ELECTRON. I know! it hurts to ship a bloated shell, but it works like charm", "context": "shipped desktop apps for 10 years", "use_case": "shipping desktop apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Any true alternatives to electron JavaScript?"}]}, {"text": " The most common complaint is bloat,", "cites": [{"id": 803466209, "item_id": 50216638, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50216638", "by": "hnlmorg", "date": "2026-10-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "avoiding the slowness and bloat of Electron", "excerpt": "These days it feels like everyone and their son are building a new IDE (and I say this as someone who\u2019s done the same haha). Interestingly, they\u2019re using graphics libraries like OpenGL/Vulkan in Go. Like I originally was. But after a year of edge cases, I gave up and switched to Wails (using OS-native webviews). And I found that a good balance between avoiding the slowness and bloat of Electron, while not having to r", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Rune 1.3: adds TypeScript, a Helix editor, Kitty graphics and OSC-7501"}, {"id": 797684976, "item_id": 49855311, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49855311", "by": "api", "date": "2026-09-26", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Now it\u2019s a hellscape of either bloated Electron or the shifting sands of native APIs", "excerpt": "Me too. I used to enjoy the journey more. I feel like the explosion of insane complexity and layers and the mess of dependencies and all the rest ruined the fun of the journey long before AI came along. Take user interfaces. Making one wasn\u2019t so bad in the 90s or 2000s. Now it\u2019s a hellscape of either bloated Electron or the shifting sands of native APIs that are all complex and special. All of it imposes cognitive lo", "context": "", "use_case": "building user interfaces", "switched_from": "", "story": "How to keep enjoying programming in a world of LLMs"}, {"id": 782180626, "item_id": 48886289, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48886289", "by": "veyh", "date": "2026-07-12", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I refuse to use bloated stuff like that", "excerpt": "I'm working on better UI for my app AutoPTT [1]. It's probably going to look somewhat similar to Discord's settings, except I won't be using Electron. I refuse to use bloated stuff like that, so I'm going to keep using a pure C UI library [2]. Obviously this is going to take a bit more work but at least the resource usage will stay low, which I consider quite important. Especially since gamers are a large portion of ", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop UI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)"}, {"id": 778495025, "item_id": 48655939, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48655939", "by": "anoop_kumar", "date": "2026-06-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Electron is great from a UI perspective but seems like it tends to get bloated very quickly.", "excerpt": "I used to like Electron but most recently became a fan of Tauri. Electron is great from a UI perspective but seems like it tends to get bloated very quickly. Any suggestions on how to deal with it?", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop app framework", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Y \u2013 A malleable coding-agent desktop app built with Electron"}, {"id": 790424819, "item_id": 49401551, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49401551", "by": "hylaride", "date": "2026-08-22", "stance": "warn", "quote": "", "excerpt": "I have mixed feelings in this debate, too. The big issue with GUIs is that they\u2019ve become so bloated, especially as the default framework is now often electron apps. Web based frameworks tend to start keeling when large amounts of data need to be handled in the DOM, etc. When I use slack and discord, I sigh when I start seeing UI rendering lag when I switch channels and projects. Though there\u2019s been some recent progr", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Stop Making TUIs"}]}, {"text": " with large binaries and heavy RAM use even for simple apps.", "cites": [{"id": 798849267, "item_id": 49928079, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49928079", "by": "jamies", "date": "2026-10-01", "stance": "warn", "quote": "binaries are less than 20mb! Nothing like Electron!", "excerpt": "Such a great project. I converted my React-enjoying cofounders to Svelte/SvelteKit worried they wouldn't like it, but they absolutely love it! We use Svelte extensively at Orb.net for our website (duh), but also as a framework for our desktop and mobile apps. Wails serves our golang and SvelteKit/Svelte provide the UX. It's been tremendous for multiplatform productivity, and binaries are less than 20mb! Nothing like ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "SvelteKit 3"}, {"id": 788112928, "item_id": 49257058, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49257058", "by": "zionsati", "date": "2026-08-11", "stance": "warn", "quote": "which is why we ended up with Electron/WebView. The amount of RAM it gobbles up just to run simple apps is pretty horrible.", "excerpt": "For a lot of front end devs, CSS/JS are frowned upon. We use it because we have to. In fact, we typically avoid JS by having TypeScript transpiled to JS. Not to mention CSS is still very inconsistent across the various browsers. Porting HTML/CSS/JS to native apps is another big problem, which is why we ended up with Electron/WebView. The amount of RAM it gobbles up just to run simple apps is pretty horrible. Why Rust", "context": "front end dev", "use_case": "native apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Replacing HTML/CSS/JS with Rust"}, {"id": 742711680, "item_id": 46419480, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46419480", "by": "alecco", "date": "2025-12-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "most apps switched to web frameworks like Electron where each one has its own huge web browser", "excerpt": "For a while CPUs kept getting significantly faster every year. Then ram kept getting bigger. Then NVMe came along and brought 200-1000x IOPS. So writing optimized software was niche and overshadowed by the huge gains of hardware. People and corporations didn't care. They preferred fast feature delivery. Even when optimizing techniques like multi-tenant servers, we ended up having heavy containers wasting RAM and reso", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop app framework", "switched_from": "", "story": "As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise"}, {"id": 796043890, "item_id": 49752743, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49752743", "by": "BlindLock", "date": "2026-09-18", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Unlike Electron, BlindLock doesn't ship a Chrome browser inside the program.", "excerpt": "Tech stack: Rust and Tauri Rust for the core, all the logic, all the commands. Tauri strictly as a dumb UI with no logic. Why Rust: I love Rust, always have. In my opinion, security-relevant software belongs in Rust. It rules out entire classes of bugs up front, because otherwise the code won't even compile. That doesn't mean you can't make mistakes. But where many people make mistakes in C++/C#, a lot of that is sim", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "I built a password vault that hides your secrets inside an ordinary photo (PNG)"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Reliable rendering", "summary": "Developers who hit WebKit and webview problems in Tauri say bundling Electron's own engine works more consistently across platforms.", "quotes": [{"id": 775799857, "item_id": 48487491, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48487491", "by": "videlov", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "we were also pleasantly surprised by how much better the development experience is with it.", "excerpt": "Surprised to see they kept Tauri. In our experience of using Tauri, it has been a significant source of compatibility and performance issues related to it's use of WebKit and WebKitGTK. So much so that we have started an effort of migrating away from it for our app, in favor of Electron (https://github.com/gitbutlerapp/gitbutler/tree/master/apps/lite) The choice was made specifically for the benefit of our users, but", "context": "builds GitButler", "use_case": "desktop app framework", "switched_from": "Tauri", "story": "The Conductor Rewrite: What They Changed to Make It Fast"}, {"id": 755945441, "item_id": 47246590, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47246590", "by": "moogly", "date": "2026-03-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "for my next stuff I'm probably going to use Electron as well since you can embed the webview", "excerpt": "I have also used Tauri for one of my private apps, and using the OS's webview just doesn't work for me, so for my next stuff I'm probably going to use Electron as well since you can embed the webview. Yeah, it's bloated, but I'm so tired of things not working properly on Wayland without disabling this and that with random env vars and not able to do a fully OOTB single portable AppImage build on Linux. I can either m", "context": "", "use_case": "cross-platform desktop apps", "switched_from": "Tauri", "story": "Claude is an Electron App because we've lost native"}, {"id": 778832482, "item_id": 48677030, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48677030", "by": "phaser", "date": "2026-06-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "for Linux and Windows we use Electron", "excerpt": "I am the freaky outlier that's actually excited about this. My city builder game, Microlandia[1], runs on Deno. The game's graphics and UI is a Three.js/React app, but the real guts of the game are a \"sidecar\" process that is a `deno compile` typescript executable. On Mac, there's a Tauri shell that runs both client and server, and for Linux and Windows we use Electron, (Tauri proved to be quite problematic except wh", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop shell", "switched_from": "Tauri", "story": "Deno 2.9"}]}, {"label": "Developer experience", "summary": "Teams report a better development experience after switching to Electron, and say it speeds up development.", "quotes": [{"id": 775799857, "item_id": 48487491, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48487491", "by": "videlov", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "we were also pleasantly surprised by how much better the development experience is with it.", "excerpt": "Surprised to see they kept Tauri. In our experience of using Tauri, it has been a significant source of compatibility and performance issues related to it's use of WebKit and WebKitGTK. So much so that we have started an effort of migrating away from it for our app, in favor of Electron (https://github.com/gitbutlerapp/gitbutler/tree/master/apps/lite) The choice was made specifically for the benefit of our users, but", "context": "builds GitButler", "use_case": "desktop app framework", "switched_from": "Tauri", "story": "The Conductor Rewrite: What They Changed to Make It Fast"}, {"id": 736517568, "item_id": 46032348, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46032348", "by": "mnafees", "date": "2025-11-24", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "We eventually abandoned the Go approach and switched to Electron.", "excerpt": "We built a background daemon as a macOS menu bar app in Go, and the performance was surprisingly bad. The Go bindings for native UI frameworks ended up being massive RAM hogs. When we profiled it, we found that the GC essentially gave up under load, which explained why customers were reporting a simple menu bar app consuming 2.5GB+ of RAM on their Macs. We eventually abandoned the Go approach and switched to Electron", "context": "Qt C++ background, built a macOS menu bar app", "use_case": "macOS menu bar app", "switched_from": "", "story": "Build desktop applications using Go and Web Technologies"}, {"id": 782738064, "item_id": 48921129, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48921129", "by": "lordofgibbons", "date": "2026-07-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's doubtful those apps would have been created in the first place if it wasn't for the speedup of development allowed by ElectronJS.", "excerpt": "It's similar to the ElectronJS desktop app problem. Sure the desktop apps use a lot more system resources, but it's doubtful those apps would have been created in the first place if it wasn't for the speedup of development allowed by ElectronJS. In this case, sure software is buggier, but there's also a ton more software+features that wouldn't have existed before AI coding tools.", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop app development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Is it just me, or is software buggier across the board?"}]}, {"label": "It just works", "summary": "Experienced desktop developers advise using it despite the bloat because it works.", "quotes": [{"id": 791702912, "item_id": 49481432, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49481432", "by": "carloslfu", "date": "2026-08-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "My best advice is JUST USE ELECTRON.", "excerpt": "Tauri is solid, but after 10 years of navigating the space and shipping desktop apps. My best advice is JUST USE ELECTRON. I know! it hurts to ship a bloated shell, but it works like charm", "context": "shipped desktop apps for 10 years", "use_case": "shipping desktop apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Any true alternatives to electron JavaScript?"}, {"id": 755844641, "item_id": 47240290, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47240290", "by": "TimFogarty", "date": "2026-03-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I think for my next project I will actually go back to electron.", "excerpt": "I have been using Tauri for a macOS app I'm making[1] and it has been great. The app is only 11MB and I've had most of the APIs I'd need. However, there are still some rough edges that have been annoying to work with. I think for my next project I will actually go back to electron. There are two issues that caused me pain: 1. I can't use Playwright to run e2e tests on the tauri app itself. That's because the webview ", "context": "Building a macOS app", "use_case": "next desktop app", "switched_from": "Tauri", "story": "Claude is an Electron App because we've lost native"}]}, {"label": "Linux availability", "summary": "One Linux user credits Electron with making Linux versions of apps standard.", "quotes": [{"id": 801325712, "item_id": 50082857, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50082857", "by": "arjie", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "if he has made Electron then he is always welcome to me.", "excerpt": "It is a marvelous thing. A beautiful app platform. Suddenly, one day, I was no longer Linux user without app. Linux app was standard. Everybody has Linux app. I had dual-boot Linux computer to play Valorant on Windows and to live normal life on Linux. And I use Mac at work. And it is all glorious because I no longer think about which is which. And there are people who are saying it is not amazing, but it is. I can hi", "context": "Linux user", "use_case": "cross-platform desktop apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Felix Rieseberg Homepage"}]}, {"label": "UI building", "summary": "One commenter calls it great from a UI perspective.", "quotes": [{"id": 778495025, "item_id": 48655939, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48655939", "by": "anoop_kumar", "date": "2026-06-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Electron is great from a UI perspective but seems like it tends to get bloated very quickly.", "excerpt": "I used to like Electron but most recently became a fan of Tauri. Electron is great from a UI perspective but seems like it tends to get bloated very quickly. Any suggestions on how to deal with it?", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop app framework", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Y \u2013 A malleable coding-agent desktop app built with Electron"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Bloat", "summary": "Many commenters call Electron apps bloated and pick alternatives such as Wails, Tauri or native UI libraries to avoid it.", "quotes": [{"id": 803466209, "item_id": 50216638, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50216638", "by": "hnlmorg", "date": "2026-10-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "avoiding the slowness and bloat of Electron", "excerpt": "These days it feels like everyone and their son are building a new IDE (and I say this as someone who\u2019s done the same haha). Interestingly, they\u2019re using graphics libraries like OpenGL/Vulkan in Go. Like I originally was. But after a year of edge cases, I gave up and switched to Wails (using OS-native webviews). And I found that a good balance between avoiding the slowness and bloat of Electron, while not having to r", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Rune 1.3: adds TypeScript, a Helix editor, Kitty graphics and OSC-7501"}, {"id": 782180626, "item_id": 48886289, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48886289", "by": "veyh", "date": "2026-07-12", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I refuse to use bloated stuff like that", "excerpt": "I'm working on better UI for my app AutoPTT [1]. It's probably going to look somewhat similar to Discord's settings, except I won't be using Electron. I refuse to use bloated stuff like that, so I'm going to keep using a pure C UI library [2]. Obviously this is going to take a bit more work but at least the resource usage will stay low, which I consider quite important. Especially since gamers are a large portion of ", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop UI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)"}, {"id": 778495025, "item_id": 48655939, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48655939", "by": "anoop_kumar", "date": "2026-06-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Electron is great from a UI perspective but seems like it tends to get bloated very quickly.", "excerpt": "I used to like Electron but most recently became a fan of Tauri. Electron is great from a UI perspective but seems like it tends to get bloated very quickly. Any suggestions on how to deal with it?", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop app framework", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Y \u2013 A malleable coding-agent desktop app built with Electron"}]}, {"label": "Memory and resources", "summary": "Commenters say each app ships its own browser and uses a lot of RAM, even for simple tasks.", "quotes": [{"id": 788112928, "item_id": 49257058, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49257058", "by": "zionsati", "date": "2026-08-11", "stance": "warn", "quote": "which is why we ended up with Electron/WebView. The amount of RAM it gobbles up just to run simple apps is pretty horrible.", "excerpt": "For a lot of front end devs, CSS/JS are frowned upon. We use it because we have to. In fact, we typically avoid JS by having TypeScript transpiled to JS. Not to mention CSS is still very inconsistent across the various browsers. Porting HTML/CSS/JS to native apps is another big problem, which is why we ended up with Electron/WebView. The amount of RAM it gobbles up just to run simple apps is pretty horrible. Why Rust", "context": "front end dev", "use_case": "native apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Replacing HTML/CSS/JS with Rust"}, {"id": 742711680, "item_id": 46419480, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46419480", "by": "alecco", "date": "2025-12-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "most apps switched to web frameworks like Electron where each one has its own huge web browser", "excerpt": "For a while CPUs kept getting significantly faster every year. Then ram kept getting bigger. Then NVMe came along and brought 200-1000x IOPS. So writing optimized software was niche and overshadowed by the huge gains of hardware. People and corporations didn't care. They preferred fast feature delivery. Even when optimizing techniques like multi-tenant servers, we ended up having heavy containers wasting RAM and reso", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop app framework", "switched_from": "", "story": "As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise"}, {"id": 762526849, "item_id": 47657928, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47657928", "by": "PufPufPuf", "date": "2026-04-06", "stance": "warn", "quote": "turns out manually calculating coordinates is simpler than fighting CSS", "excerpt": "I used L\u00d6VE to build a simple Kodi alternative for my home media center setup. My first attempt was using Electron but rewriting to L\u00d6VE meant much simpler code (turns out manually calculating coordinates is simpler than fighting CSS) and less resource consumption (not a high bar, yes). It works so well I might clean it up and open source it...", "context": "", "use_case": "home media center app", "switched_from": "", "story": "L\u00d6VE: 2D Game Framework for Lua"}]}, {"label": "Slow UI", "summary": "Some report UI lag in Electron apps and contrast them with fast native clients.", "quotes": [{"id": 790424819, "item_id": 49401551, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49401551", "by": "hylaride", "date": "2026-08-22", "stance": "warn", "quote": "", "excerpt": "I have mixed feelings in this debate, too. The big issue with GUIs is that they\u2019ve become so bloated, especially as the default framework is now often electron apps. Web based frameworks tend to start keeling when large amounts of data need to be handled in the DOM, etc. When I use slack and discord, I sigh when I start seeing UI rendering lag when I switch channels and projects. Though there\u2019s been some recent progr", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Stop Making TUIs"}, {"id": 792328737, "item_id": 49520546, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49520546", "by": "lysace", "date": "2026-09-01", "stance": "warn", "quote": "It's unfortunate the skill and desire of building fast native UIs are being lost to Electron and CEF wrappers.", "excerpt": "You're remembering correctly. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28203654 What's funny about having to rely on unauthorized clones to provide a fast native UX was that Spotify's original client back in 2008 started out as beautifully light, custom rendered native client. Few Apps ever had that wow factor the first time I used it, it was so much lighter and more responsive than anything else of the day. I remember b", "context": "built a music startup", "use_case": "desktop apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Fastpotify"}, {"id": 803466209, "item_id": 50216638, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50216638", "by": "hnlmorg", "date": "2026-10-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "avoiding the slowness and bloat of Electron", "excerpt": "These days it feels like everyone and their son are building a new IDE (and I say this as someone who\u2019s done the same haha). Interestingly, they\u2019re using graphics libraries like OpenGL/Vulkan in Go. Like I originally was. But after a year of edge cases, I gave up and switched to Wails (using OS-native webviews). And I found that a good balance between avoiding the slowness and bloat of Electron, while not having to r", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Rune 1.3: adds TypeScript, a Helix editor, Kitty graphics and OSC-7501"}]}, {"label": "Large binaries", "summary": "Builders using other frameworks point out that Electron bundles a Chrome browser, which makes installs much larger.", "quotes": [{"id": 798849267, "item_id": 49928079, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49928079", "by": "jamies", "date": "2026-10-01", "stance": "warn", "quote": "binaries are less than 20mb! Nothing like Electron!", "excerpt": "Such a great project. I converted my React-enjoying cofounders to Svelte/SvelteKit worried they wouldn't like it, but they absolutely love it! We use Svelte extensively at Orb.net for our website (duh), but also as a framework for our desktop and mobile apps. Wails serves our golang and SvelteKit/Svelte provide the UX. It's been tremendous for multiplatform productivity, and binaries are less than 20mb! Nothing like ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "SvelteKit 3"}, {"id": 796043890, "item_id": 49752743, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49752743", "by": "BlindLock", "date": "2026-09-18", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Unlike Electron, BlindLock doesn't ship a Chrome browser inside the program.", "excerpt": "Tech stack: Rust and Tauri Rust for the core, all the logic, all the commands. Tauri strictly as a dumb UI with no logic. Why Rust: I love Rust, always have. In my opinion, security-relevant software belongs in Rust. It rules out entire classes of bugs up front, because otherwise the code won't even compile. That doesn't mean you can't make mistakes. But where many people make mistakes in C++/C#, a lot of that is sim", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "I built a password vault that hides your secrets inside an ordinary photo (PNG)"}]}, {"label": "Non-native feel", "summary": "Electron apps tend to adopt their own theme because web UIs struggle to feel like native desktop apps.", "quotes": [{"id": 738884915, "item_id": 46180307, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46180307", "by": "_jzlw", "date": "2025-12-07", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "There's a reason most Electron apps adopt their own unique theme.", "excerpt": "Native mobile or native desktop? The former is relatively easy, at least for Android. React and Angular both have very good Material UI libraries. But making a PWA feel like a native desktop app is hard. There's a reason most Electron apps adopt their own unique theme. I've never seen a component library that fully replicates a desktop UI without feeling like a web app, not even Microsoft's own Fluent UI web componen", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Best tricks to make a PWA feel more native?"}]}, {"label": "Developer fatigue", "summary": "Some developers who built several Electron apps say they have since moved to native development.", "quotes": [{"id": 753575088, "item_id": 47098443, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47098443", "by": "unmarkdown", "date": "2026-02-20", "stance": "warn", "quote": "The electron fatigue is real. I've developed several apps on Electron and have moved away from it.", "excerpt": "Nice to see a native viewer. The electron fatigue is real. I've developed several apps on Electron and have moved away from it. Curious about the rendering pipeline ... are you using a Swift markdown parser or wrapping something like cmark/commonmark under the hood? The tricky part I've found with GFM rendering is getting tables and task lists to behave consistently, especially when you add LaTeX and Mermaid on top.", "context": "developed several apps on Electron", "use_case": "desktop app development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Markdown Prism \u2013 A Non-Electron Markdown Editor for macOS"}, {"id": 753706033, "item_id": 47106627, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47106627", "by": "Robdel12", "date": "2026-02-21", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I do not want a electron app. We can do better", "excerpt": "Heh, I felt the same. I'm a web dev but I do not want a electron app. We can do better, I used to write electron apps because I wasn't able to build a proper native app. Now I can! I've been building a native macOS/iOS app that lets me manage my agents. Both the ability to actually control/chat fully from the app and to just monitor your existing CLI sessions (and/or take 'em over in the app). Terrible little demo as", "context": "web dev", "use_case": "desktop apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "When Code is Free, Why is Claude is an Electron app?"}]}], "who": [{"by": "arjie", "context": "Linux user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50082857", "date": "2026-10-14"}, {"by": "carloslfu", "context": "shipped desktop apps for 10 years", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49481432", "date": "2026-08-28"}, {"by": "camreon", "context": "full stack web dev", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48508887", "date": "2026-06-12"}, {"by": "videlov", "context": "builds GitButler", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48487491", "date": "2026-06-11"}, {"by": "TimFogarty", "context": "Building a macOS app", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47240290", "date": "2026-03-03"}, {"by": "mnafees", "context": "Qt C++ background, built a macOS menu bar app", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46032348", "date": "2025-11-24"}], "tags": ["for cross-platform desktop apps", "Tauri alternative", "for Linux users", "for web developers"], "use_cases": ["desktop apps", "desktop app framework", "cross-platform desktop apps", "desktop app development", "windows desktop app", "certificate verification"], "compared": [{"slug": "tauri", "name": "Tauri", "co": 22, "switched_from": 4, "switched_to": 5}, {"slug": "electrobun", "name": "Electrobun", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "l-ve", "name": "L\u00d6VE", "co": 1, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "flutter", "name": "Flutter", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "wails", "name": "Wails", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "godot", "name": "Godot", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "egui", "name": "egui", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [{"id": 780781968, "item_id": 48798873, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48798873", "by": "mitchchn", "date": "2026-07-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Electron is not an evil plot to destroy everything that is good and pure about the Mac.", "excerpt": "I'm one of the project maintainers for Electron (not felixrieseberg) and the level of spitefulness in this post and some of Gruber's other recent articles about Electron is really starting to bother me. It's fine for Gruber to dislike software, even to passionately hate it I guess. But this article is borderline conspiracy theory stuff singling out one (very friendly and easy-going!) engineer as the source of all his", "context": "Electron project maintainer", "use_case": "cross-platform desktop apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Claude's Criminally Bad Electron Mac App Is an Inside Job"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48920698", "title": "Ask HN: Is it just me, or is software buggier across the board?", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47235430", "title": "Claude is an Electron App because we've lost native", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50214325", "title": "Rune 1.3: adds TypeScript, a Helix editor, Kitty graphics and OSC-7501", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50160877", "title": "Go will reject certificate chains containing eight distrusted SPKIs", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50082470", "title": "Felix Rieseberg Homepage", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49927100", "title": "The death of web development education", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"neutral": 1}, "2025-12": {"neutral": 2, "warn": 2}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {"warn": 3}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 2, "warn": 2}, "2026-04": {"warn": 1}, "2026-05": {"compare": 1, "neutral": 1, "warn": 1}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 2, "warn": 1}, "2026-07": {"warn": 3, "recommend": 1}, "2026-08": {"warn": 2, "recommend": 2}, "2026-09": {"warn": 4, "compare": 1}, "2026-10": {"warn": 2, "neutral": 2, "recommend": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 803466209, "item_id": 50216638, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50216638", "by": "hnlmorg", "date": "2026-10-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "avoiding the slowness and bloat of Electron", "excerpt": "These days it feels like everyone and their son are building a new IDE (and I say this as someone who\u2019s done the same haha). Interestingly, they\u2019re using graphics libraries like OpenGL/Vulkan in Go. Like I originally was. But after a year of edge cases, I gave up and switched to Wails (using OS-native webviews). And I found that a good balance between avoiding the slowness and bloat of Electron, while not having to r", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Rune 1.3: adds TypeScript, a Helix editor, Kitty graphics and OSC-7501"}, {"id": 802648034, "item_id": 50165502, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50165502", "by": "agwa", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Electron: https://github.com/electron/electron/pull/55126", "excerpt": "Other certificate verifiers are doing the same: Node: https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/66871 rustls/webpki: https://github.com/rustls/webpki/pull/546 Electron: https://github.com/electron/electron/pull/55126 This is very serious and you should definitely upgrade. Hopefully OpenSSL will have a patch soon as well.", "context": "", "use_case": "certificate verification", "switched_from": "", "story": "Go will reject certificate chains containing eight distrusted SPKIs"}, {"id": 801325712, "item_id": 50082857, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50082857", "by": "arjie", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "if he has made Electron then he is always welcome to me.", "excerpt": "It is a marvelous thing. A beautiful app platform. Suddenly, one day, I was no longer Linux user without app. Linux app was standard. Everybody has Linux app. I had dual-boot Linux computer to play Valorant on Windows and to live normal life on Linux. And I use Mac at work. And it is all glorious because I no longer think about which is which. And there are people who are saying it is not amazing, but it is. I can hi", "context": "Linux user", "use_case": "cross-platform desktop apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Felix Rieseberg Homepage"}, {"id": 798852128, "item_id": 49928258, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49928258", "by": "johnnyanmac", "date": "2026-10-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I still found it valuable to take the time to learn Electron (and update my front end knowledge) properly", "excerpt": "I constantly get dragged into web tech from tangential projects. I still found it valuable to take the time to learn Electron (and update my front end knowledge) properly to do a port of an Electron app for a slightly different context. I used AI to extract the raw frontend structure of the app because I know I can't design to save my life. And I still need to tweak it quite a bit because the interface was always jan", "context": "", "use_case": "porting a desktop app", "switched_from": "", "story": "The death of web development education"}, {"id": 798849267, "item_id": 49928079, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49928079", "by": "jamies", "date": "2026-10-01", "stance": "warn", "quote": "binaries are less than 20mb! Nothing like Electron!", "excerpt": "Such a great project. I converted my React-enjoying cofounders to Svelte/SvelteKit worried they wouldn't like it, but they absolutely love it! We use Svelte extensively at Orb.net for our website (duh), but also as a framework for our desktop and mobile apps. Wails serves our golang and SvelteKit/Svelte provide the UX. It's been tremendous for multiplatform productivity, and binaries are less than 20mb! Nothing like ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "SvelteKit 3"}, {"id": 797684976, "item_id": 49855311, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49855311", "by": "api", "date": "2026-09-26", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Now it\u2019s a hellscape of either bloated Electron or the shifting sands of native APIs", "excerpt": "Me too. I used to enjoy the journey more. I feel like the explosion of insane complexity and layers and the mess of dependencies and all the rest ruined the fun of the journey long before AI came along. Take user interfaces. Making one wasn\u2019t so bad in the 90s or 2000s. Now it\u2019s a hellscape of either bloated Electron or the shifting sands of native APIs that are all complex and special. All of it imposes cognitive lo", "context": "", "use_case": "building user interfaces", "switched_from": "", "story": "How to keep enjoying programming in a world of LLMs"}, {"id": 796043890, "item_id": 49752743, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49752743", "by": "BlindLock", "date": "2026-09-18", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Unlike Electron, BlindLock doesn't ship a Chrome browser inside the program.", "excerpt": "Tech stack: Rust and Tauri Rust for the core, all the logic, all the commands. Tauri strictly as a dumb UI with no logic. Why Rust: I love Rust, always have. In my opinion, security-relevant software belongs in Rust. It rules out entire classes of bugs up front, because otherwise the code won't even compile. That doesn't mean you can't make mistakes. But where many people make mistakes in C++/C#, a lot of that is sim", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "I built a password vault that hides your secrets inside an ordinary photo (PNG)"}, {"id": 795529568, "item_id": 49720598, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49720598", "by": "krapp", "date": "2026-09-16", "stance": "warn", "quote": "It's depressing that everyone decided Electron was the final form of all applications", "excerpt": "It's depressing that everyone decided Electron was the final form of all applications and that native apps were dead until AI came along, and if native apps come back it will only be as vibe-coded slop. It's like we've just moved from once circle of hell into another. Also Show HN is supposed to be for posting code that the community can discuss and play with. Plain advertisements and landing pages aren't allowed.", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Capsule \u2013 Single-file web apps that save their data into SQLite"}, {"id": 795305056, "item_id": 49706566, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49706566", "by": "giancarlostoro", "date": "2026-09-15", "stance": "warn", "quote": "We had Electron hell before AI.", "excerpt": "> There's plenty blaming AI here, but IMHO the rot was already there long ago, and AI only accelerated it. This. We had Electron hell before AI. It's infuriating when you consider that we used to have access to so many easy to design native GUI solutions.", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop app framework", "switched_from": "", "story": "Microsoft patches Windows and Excel \u2013 breaks audio, remote access, and paste"}, {"id": 794285042, "item_id": 49642815, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49642815", "by": "BlindLock", "date": "2026-09-10", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Unlike Electron, BlindLock doesn't ship a Chrome browser inside the program.", "excerpt": "Tech stack: Rust and Tauri Rust for the core, all the logic, all the commands. Tauri strictly as a dumb UI with no logic. Why Rust: I love Rust, always have. In my opinion, security-relevant software belongs in Rust. It rules out entire classes of bugs up front, because otherwise the code won't even compile. That doesn't mean you can't make mistakes. But where many people make mistakes in C++/C#, a lot of that is sim", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: BlindLock \u2013 Passwords hidden in a photo, sealed to your TPM/SE"}, {"id": 792328737, "item_id": 49520546, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49520546", "by": "lysace", "date": "2026-09-01", "stance": "warn", "quote": "It's unfortunate the skill and desire of building fast native UIs are being lost to Electron and CEF wrappers.", "excerpt": "You're remembering correctly. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28203654 What's funny about having to rely on unauthorized clones to provide a fast native UX was that Spotify's original client back in 2008 started out as beautifully light, custom rendered native client. Few Apps ever had that wow factor the first time I used it, it was so much lighter and more responsive than anything else of the day. I remember b", "context": "built a music startup", "use_case": "desktop apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Fastpotify"}, {"id": 791702912, "item_id": 49481432, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49481432", "by": "carloslfu", "date": "2026-08-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "My best advice is JUST USE ELECTRON.", "excerpt": "Tauri is solid, but after 10 years of navigating the space and shipping desktop apps. My best advice is JUST USE ELECTRON. I know! it hurts to ship a bloated shell, but it works like charm", "context": "shipped desktop apps for 10 years", "use_case": "shipping desktop apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Any true alternatives to electron JavaScript?"}, {"id": 790424819, "item_id": 49401551, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49401551", "by": "hylaride", "date": "2026-08-22", "stance": "warn", "quote": "", "excerpt": "I have mixed feelings in this debate, too. The big issue with GUIs is that they\u2019ve become so bloated, especially as the default framework is now often electron apps. Web based frameworks tend to start keeling when large amounts of data need to be handled in the DOM, etc. When I use slack and discord, I sigh when I start seeing UI rendering lag when I switch channels and projects. Though there\u2019s been some recent progr", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Stop Making TUIs"}, {"id": 788548770, "item_id": 49284298, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49284298", "by": "GeneralMaximus", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "there are basically only three options in 2026: Qt, Electron, or roll your own like Zed/Sublime.", "excerpt": "Why would you not? I use Ableton, Figma, and Emacs regularly. I have a decade (or more) of muscle memory around these apps. If they suddenly decided to adopt the look, feel, and conventions of their underlying host platform, I\u2019d be very upset. If I\u2019m using Emacs, I don\u2019t want to use Cmd+S to save my files on macOS and Ctrl+S on Windows. I\u2019ve already memorized C-x C-s. I don\u2019t want Ableton to adopt whatever new design", "context": "", "use_case": "long-lasting cross-platform apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}, {"id": 788112928, "item_id": 49257058, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49257058", "by": "zionsati", "date": "2026-08-11", "stance": "warn", "quote": "which is why we ended up with Electron/WebView. The amount of RAM it gobbles up just to run simple apps is pretty horrible.", "excerpt": "For a lot of front end devs, CSS/JS are frowned upon. We use it because we have to. In fact, we typically avoid JS by having TypeScript transpiled to JS. Not to mention CSS is still very inconsistent across the various browsers. Porting HTML/CSS/JS to native apps is another big problem, which is why we ended up with Electron/WebView. The amount of RAM it gobbles up just to run simple apps is pretty horrible. Why Rust", "context": "front end dev", "use_case": "native apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Replacing HTML/CSS/JS with Rust"}, {"id": 784488064, "item_id": 49030504, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49030504", "by": "locusofself", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Imagine if the issue of making an attractive cross-platform application didn't mean using a chromium-based Electron type framework.", "excerpt": "Something that I think we will see soon (if it doesn't exist already), are programming languages that are specifically designed to be used with LLMs doing the coding, with natural language as the primary input. Maybe LLMs will get so good that it's just not necessary, but it's hard to imagine a world in which this new paradigm of most users using coding harness (or event totally autonomous agents) doesn't end up havi", "context": "", "use_case": "cross-platform apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why care about programming languages"}, {"id": 782740544, "item_id": 48921284, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48921284", "by": "PaulHoule", "date": "2026-07-15", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Electron apps are selected for things that are harmful to your user experience.", "excerpt": "Electron apps are selected for things that are harmful to your user experience. That is, if you know how to make Electron apps you also know how to make web applications and web applications are generally superior and preferred by users. No install, no bloated runtime, \"just works\", say it again \"JUST WORKS!\" Any time somebody makes an Electron app there is a reason why they make an Electron app and it usually is a b", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Is it just me, or is software buggier across the board?"}, {"id": 782738064, "item_id": 48921129, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48921129", "by": "lordofgibbons", "date": "2026-07-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's doubtful those apps would have been created in the first place if it wasn't for the speedup of development allowed by ElectronJS.", "excerpt": "It's similar to the ElectronJS desktop app problem. Sure the desktop apps use a lot more system resources, but it's doubtful those apps would have been created in the first place if it wasn't for the speedup of development allowed by ElectronJS. In this case, sure software is buggier, but there's also a ton more software+features that wouldn't have existed before AI coding tools.", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop app development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Is it just me, or is software buggier across the board?"}, {"id": 782180626, "item_id": 48886289, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48886289", "by": "veyh", "date": "2026-07-12", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I refuse to use bloated stuff like that", "excerpt": "I'm working on better UI for my app AutoPTT [1]. It's probably going to look somewhat similar to Discord's settings, except I won't be using Electron. I refuse to use bloated stuff like that, so I'm going to keep using a pure C UI library [2]. Obviously this is going to take a bit more work but at least the resource usage will stay low, which I consider quite important. Especially since gamers are a large portion of ", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop UI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)"}, {"id": 778832482, "item_id": 48677030, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48677030", "by": "phaser", "date": "2026-06-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "for Linux and Windows we use Electron", "excerpt": "I am the freaky outlier that's actually excited about this. My city builder game, Microlandia[1], runs on Deno. The game's graphics and UI is a Three.js/React app, but the real guts of the game are a \"sidecar\" process that is a `deno compile` typescript executable. On Mac, there's a Tauri shell that runs both client and server, and for Linux and Windows we use Electron, (Tauri proved to be quite problematic except wh", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop shell", "switched_from": "Tauri", "story": "Deno 2.9"}, {"id": 778495025, "item_id": 48655939, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48655939", "by": "anoop_kumar", "date": "2026-06-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Electron is great from a UI perspective but seems like it tends to get bloated very quickly.", "excerpt": "I used to like Electron but most recently became a fan of Tauri. Electron is great from a UI perspective but seems like it tends to get bloated very quickly. Any suggestions on how to deal with it?", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop app framework", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Y \u2013 A malleable coding-agent desktop app built with Electron"}, {"id": 776142192, "item_id": 48508887, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48508887", "by": "camreon", "date": "2026-06-12", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used Electron, Node, Typescript, React, and Redux to build it", "excerpt": "Location: Seattle, WA Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: Yes Technologies: Typescript/Javascript, Node, React, Python, C#/.NET, SQL, AWS, HTML/CSS, Docker, Terraform, K8s, Elasticsearch, Cursor R\u00e9sum\u00e9/CV: https://camerong.com/docs/resume%20-%20cameron%20guthrie.pdf LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cameron-guthrie-8340032a/ Email: camerongu3@gmail.com --- Full stack web dev here with a bias towards the backend. On ", "context": "full stack web dev", "use_case": "Windows desktop app", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (June 2026)"}, {"id": 775799857, "item_id": 48487491, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48487491", "by": "videlov", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "we were also pleasantly surprised by how much better the development experience is with it.", "excerpt": "Surprised to see they kept Tauri. In our experience of using Tauri, it has been a significant source of compatibility and performance issues related to it's use of WebKit and WebKitGTK. So much so that we have started an effort of migrating away from it for our app, in favor of Electron (https://github.com/gitbutlerapp/gitbutler/tree/master/apps/lite) The choice was made specifically for the benefit of our users, but", "context": "builds GitButler", "use_case": "desktop app framework", "switched_from": "Tauri", "story": "The Conductor Rewrite: What They Changed to Make It Fast"}, {"id": 771985729, "item_id": 48249108, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48249108", "by": "xbar", "date": "2026-05-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I hate those things in my end-user applications, too.", "excerpt": "I have never been in the target audience for such software and I am not intending to change that. However, I love it. Not because I think it executes on its promise perfectly nor that it feels safe to use. I love it because it knows what it hates: Electron; subscriptions; AI-first; single-platform; interpreted software; big, fat, sloppy files. I hate those things in my end-user applications, too. I hope they figure o", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "ArcBrush \u2013 Node-based 2D image editor"}, {"id": 771699060, "item_id": 48231191, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48231191", "by": "carpo", "date": "2026-05-21", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I made it a local Electron app", "excerpt": "This is great. I wish I had enough ram for a local model. I just spent the last few weeks writing something very similar, but I made it a local Electron app with Whisper, ffmpeg and I added semantic search and embeddings for chatting with the videos. It talks to Claude for the vision analysis, tagging and video chat. Do you only send one image for yours? I used a customised scene detection algorithm to find multiple ", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop app framework", "switched_from": "", "story": "Indexing a year of video locally on a 2021 MacBook with Gemma4-31B (50GB swap)"}, {"id": 768128037, "item_id": 48008002, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48008002", "by": "namelosw", "date": "2026-05-04", "stance": "compare", "quote": "I would prefer Electron over those TUI unless I have to SSH.", "excerpt": "It doesn't really make sense to me. I've been using Emacs and Vim for decades, and have been using Claude Code for months, but I moved to Codex GUI and the VSCode Claude Code plugin eventually. The biggest problem is that monospaced fonts are not really the best for reading, and with coding agents, people should be reading text most of the time. The current implementation isn't command-line, but a re-implemented GUI ", "context": "", "use_case": "GUI app framework", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why TUIs Are Back"}, {"id": 762526849, "item_id": 47657928, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47657928", "by": "PufPufPuf", "date": "2026-04-06", "stance": "warn", "quote": "turns out manually calculating coordinates is simpler than fighting CSS", "excerpt": "I used L\u00d6VE to build a simple Kodi alternative for my home media center setup. My first attempt was using Electron but rewriting to L\u00d6VE meant much simpler code (turns out manually calculating coordinates is simpler than fighting CSS) and less resource consumption (not a high bar, yes). It works so well I might clean it up and open source it...", "context": "", "use_case": "home media center app", "switched_from": "", "story": "L\u00d6VE: 2D Game Framework for Lua"}, {"id": 761017680, "item_id": 47563605, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47563605", "by": "Shorel", "date": "2026-03-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "the unholy abomination we have with Electron apps", "excerpt": "I used to dislike TCL/Tk because of the ugly toolkit and also language. Now I wish it had won instead of the unholy abomination we have with Electron apps.", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop app framework", "switched_from": "", "story": "Undroidwish \u2013 a single-file, batteries-included Tcl/Tk binary for many platforms"}, {"id": 759670224, "item_id": 47479389, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47479389", "by": "raw_anon_1111", "date": "2026-03-22", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Also you can\u2019t imagine how much I love cross platform Electron apps.", "excerpt": "Yes I want more shitty web apps. Also you can\u2019t imagine how much I love cross platform Electron apps. I have no desire for random websites to have that much access to my phone.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari continues"}, {"id": 755945441, "item_id": 47246590, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47246590", "by": "moogly", "date": "2026-03-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "for my next stuff I'm probably going to use Electron as well since you can embed the webview", "excerpt": "I have also used Tauri for one of my private apps, and using the OS's webview just doesn't work for me, so for my next stuff I'm probably going to use Electron as well since you can embed the webview. Yeah, it's bloated, but I'm so tired of things not working properly on Wayland without disabling this and that with random env vars and not able to do a fully OOTB single portable AppImage build on Linux. I can either m", "context": "", "use_case": "cross-platform desktop apps", "switched_from": "Tauri", "story": "Claude is an Electron App because we've lost native"}, {"id": 755844641, "item_id": 47240290, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47240290", "by": "TimFogarty", "date": "2026-03-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I think for my next project I will actually go back to electron.", "excerpt": "I have been using Tauri for a macOS app I'm making[1] and it has been great. The app is only 11MB and I've had most of the APIs I'd need. However, there are still some rough edges that have been annoying to work with. I think for my next project I will actually go back to electron. There are two issues that caused me pain: 1. I can't use Playwright to run e2e tests on the tauri app itself. That's because the webview ", "context": "Building a macOS app", "use_case": "next desktop app", "switched_from": "Tauri", "story": "Claude is an Electron App because we've lost native"}, {"id": 753706033, "item_id": 47106627, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47106627", "by": "Robdel12", "date": "2026-02-21", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I do not want a electron app. We can do better", "excerpt": "Heh, I felt the same. I'm a web dev but I do not want a electron app. We can do better, I used to write electron apps because I wasn't able to build a proper native app. Now I can! I've been building a native macOS/iOS app that lets me manage my agents. Both the ability to actually control/chat fully from the app and to just monitor your existing CLI sessions (and/or take 'em over in the app). Terrible little demo as", "context": "web dev", "use_case": "desktop apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "When Code is Free, Why is Claude is an Electron app?"}, {"id": 753575088, "item_id": 47098443, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47098443", "by": "unmarkdown", "date": "2026-02-20", "stance": "warn", "quote": "The electron fatigue is real. I've developed several apps on Electron and have moved away from it.", "excerpt": "Nice to see a native viewer. The electron fatigue is real. I've developed several apps on Electron and have moved away from it. Curious about the rendering pipeline ... are you using a Swift markdown parser or wrapping something like cmark/commonmark under the hood? The tricky part I've found with GFM rendering is getting tables and task lists to behave consistently, especially when you add LaTeX and Mermaid on top.", "context": "developed several apps on Electron", "use_case": "desktop app development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Markdown Prism \u2013 A Non-Electron Markdown Editor for macOS"}, {"id": 751578209, "item_id": 46973638, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46973638", "by": "jmyeet", "date": "2026-02-11", "stance": "warn", "quote": "this is why I violently despise Eletron apps and anything that runs its own browser engine for a GUI", "excerpt": "I found a simpler explanation for what's going on [1]. To summarize, malicious Markdown files with custom schemes in URLs can trick users into executing arbitrary code. I honestly didn't know this was a \"feature\" of Notepad. I guess that's my real problem here. The constant desire for feature bloat inevitably introduces potential vulnerabilities. In no world did I expect Notepad to have the ability under any circumst", "context": "", "use_case": "app framework", "switched_from": "", "story": "Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability"}, {"id": 743173825, "item_id": 46448364, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46448364", "by": "sedatk", "date": "2025-12-31", "stance": "warn", "quote": "WebView or Electron screams lazy to me", "excerpt": "I love Windows 11. I'm sure some of my code still lives in Windows 11 from my days at Microsoft. But, the hasty and haphazard ways that some teams at Microsoft treat it sadden me. I specifically despise Microsoft Accounts being forced down our throats because, among all other things, they make certain workflows impossible. For instance, you can't schedule tasks to run as your user when you're not logged in[1]. It won", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "2025 was a disaster for Windows 11"}, {"id": 742711680, "item_id": 46419480, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46419480", "by": "alecco", "date": "2025-12-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "most apps switched to web frameworks like Electron where each one has its own huge web browser", "excerpt": "For a while CPUs kept getting significantly faster every year. Then ram kept getting bigger. Then NVMe came along and brought 200-1000x IOPS. So writing optimized software was niche and overshadowed by the huge gains of hardware. People and corporations didn't care. They preferred fast feature delivery. Even when optimizing techniques like multi-tenant servers, we ended up having heavy containers wasting RAM and reso", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop app framework", "switched_from": "", "story": "As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise"}, {"id": 738884915, "item_id": 46180307, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46180307", "by": "_jzlw", "date": "2025-12-07", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "There's a reason most Electron apps adopt their own unique theme.", "excerpt": "Native mobile or native desktop? The former is relatively easy, at least for Android. React and Angular both have very good Material UI libraries. But making a PWA feel like a native desktop app is hard. There's a reason most Electron apps adopt their own unique theme. I've never seen a component library that fully replicates a desktop UI without feeling like a web app, not even Microsoft's own Fluent UI web componen", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Best tricks to make a PWA feel more native?"}, {"id": 737775409, "item_id": 46110963, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46110963", "by": "camreon", "date": "2025-12-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used Electron, Node, Typescript, React, and Redux to build it", "excerpt": "Location: Seattle, WA Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: No Technologies: Typescript/Javascript, Node, React, Python, Rust, Elixir, PostgreSQL, AWS, CircleCI, HTML, CSS R\u00e9sum\u00e9/CV: https://camreon.github.io/docs/resume%20-%20cameron%20guthrie.pdf Email: camerongu3@gmail.com --- Full stack web dev here with a bias towards the backend. On my own time I prefer to use python for web work and GDScript/Godot for game dev, but", "context": "", "use_case": "Windows desktop app", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (December 2025)"}, {"id": 736517568, "item_id": 46032348, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46032348", "by": "mnafees", "date": "2025-11-24", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "We eventually abandoned the Go approach and switched to Electron.", "excerpt": "We built a background daemon as a macOS menu bar app in Go, and the performance was surprisingly bad. The Go bindings for native UI frameworks ended up being massive RAM hogs. When we profiled it, we found that the GC essentially gave up under load, which explained why customers were reporting a simple menu bar app consuming 2.5GB+ of RAM on their Macs. We eventually abandoned the Go approach and switched to Electron", "context": "Qt C++ background, built a macOS menu bar app", "use_case": "macOS menu bar app", "switched_from": "", "story": "Build desktop applications using Go and Web Technologies"}]}