Transitioning to Rust
Discord is moving away from Electron, the cross-platform framework previously used to build its desktop application. By transitioning fully to Rust, a language prioritized for speed and memory safety, the company aims to resolve the high resource consumption typically associated with Electron-based software.
Discord is ditching Electron and its new app uses less RAM
The platform is shifting its entire desktop client architecture to the Rust programming language.
Technical Improvements
According to Discord CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy, the company has utilized Rust for infrastructure and voice technology since 2018. The new architecture will eliminate Electron and React Native, allowing mobile and desktop platforms to share application code via Rust while maintaining native UI elements.
Preliminary data shared by the company indicates the new Windows client utilizes approximately 290MB of RAM. This represents a significant reduction compared to the current version, which often exceeds 1GB of memory usage depending on server activity.
While a specific release date for the full transition has not been announced, Discord intends to begin user testing in the near future.
