Discord is rebuilding its desktop app from the ground up in Rust and dropping Electron, the web-based framework it has used for years. The company’s chief technology officer, Stanislav Vishnevskiy, says the goal is a lighter app, and he has shown a Windows build using 290MB of memory.
Vishnevskiy announced the move in a post on X on 4 November. Discord has used Rust since 2018, he wrote, and much of its infrastructure, its voice technology and parts of the current client already run on it. Moving the whole client over was what he called the holy grail. “That means Electron goes away, and so does React Native,” he wrote. Phones will keep a native interface but share app code with the desktop version through Rust.
One screenshot is thin evidence. It does not say how many servers or voice channels were open, or whether the build had every feature of the current app. Discord has not published a feature list, a date or a download for the new client.
Vishnevskiy also answered a guess from the community: the new interface is built on GPUI and not on Tauri, another framework for lightweight desktop apps. He said Discord hopes to put the new client in front of users for testing soon, without giving a date.
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. That means Electron goes away, and so does React Native, mobile keeps native UI but shares app code with desktop via Rust. We hope to get it into testing with users soon™. (And it’s not Tauri, it’s GPUI, so good guess everyone.)
Alright, back to staring at the WoW Forever login screen.
— Stanislav (@svishnevskiy) November 4, 2026
Electron packs a copy of a web browser with each app, which is why Electron apps tend to use a lot of memory. The current Windows app can pass 1GB of RAM for anyone in more than a few servers. Vishnevskiy’s screenshot of Windows Task Manager lists a build called Discord Phoenix at 290.2MB, next to Google Chrome at 1,568.6MB and Notion at 932.5MB.
Until a test build reaches users, the 290MB figure stays Discord’s own number from its own machine.
