Windows 11 apps should drop Electron, Discord shows why
The gist
Discord is rebuilding its desktop client in Rust, with an early Windows 11 build using 290.2MB of RAM.
The change targets Electron's heavy memory use, a sore point for Windows 11 users.
How it unfolded
- Nov 5, 2026Discord is rebuilding its desktop client in Rust, replacing the Electron-based client. An early Windows 11 build labelled "Discord Phoenix" used 290.2MB of RAM, against 600MB or more when the current client sits idle and past 4GB in extreme cases.
- Nov 5, 2026Vishnevskiy demonstrated the current Electron app and the new Rust client side by side on two Lenovo ThinkPads running Windows 11; the new client launched more quickly.
- Nov 6, 2026Windows Latest reported the new client drops the "Starting" screen and uses 70% less RAM even with two accounts signed in. It also reported WhatsApp went from a native app idling under 100MB to a WebView2 wrapper using up to 1.2GB, and Microsoft Teams took up 963MB doing nothing in its tests.
Key terms
- Rust
- A general-purpose programming language emphasizing performance, type safety, concurrency, and memory safety.
- Electron
- A free, open-source framework for building desktop applications with web technologies, using Chromium and Node.js.
- WinUI
- Microsoft's native user interface framework for building Windows desktop applications, described in XAML with logic in C# or C++.
Source: Wikipedia