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Discord Drops Electron for a Rust Rewrite: 290 MB RAM with Two Active Accounts
290 MB of RAM with two accounts connected: that's what a first version of the future Discord client, completely rewritten in Rust, is already showing. Here's what we know.
On November 4, 2026, Stanislav Vishnevskiy, Discord cofounder and CTO, revealed in a post published on X what he had been working on for several days: the Discord client is being completely rewritten in Rust. "We adopted Rust early, back in 2018, and a good part of our infrastructure and voice technology, and even part of the current client, is already in Rust. The holy grail was bringing the entire client over.", he wrote.
The goal is clear: abandon Electron and move to a full-Rust application. "That means Electron is going away, as is React Native. Mobile keeps a native interface, but shares the application code with the desktop version through Rust", he explains.
In the screenshot of Task Manager shared on X, the new Discord client uses only 290.2 MB of RAM. In the same capture, some heavy offenders, notably Notion (932.5 MB) and Spotify (652.7 MB), both of which ship with a web engine, use far more memory. And the Discord client was not idle: according to Stanislav Vishnevskiy, two accounts were connected simultaneously. So this was a real test, not a Discord client launched with no active account.
290 MB of RAM consumed by the Discord client is really low. What's more, I remember that in December 2025, Discord was experimenting with a feature that automatically restarted its Windows app once it went beyond 4 GB of RAM. Discord then tried to optimize Electron: in its September 8, 2026 patch, it said that moving to Electron 42 reduced median CPU usage by around 17%, at the cost of an around 4% increase in median memory usage. Still, it's clear that developers have real trouble optimizing Electron-based applications...
GPUI Instead of Tauri
If Electron is heavy, it's because it bundles a full Chromium and Node.js runtime into every application. Many people therefore bet on Tauri, the best-known Rust alternative. Wrong. "And it's not Tauri, it's GPUI, so nice try everyone.", jokes Stanislav Vishnevskiy.
Tauri keeps a UI built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, rendered through the system webview (WebView2 on Windows). GPUI, the framework created by the team behind the Zed code editor, draws the interface directly through the GPU, without HTML. The system webview would still be used for YouTube integrations and Activities. The web version, meanwhile, would continue to render HTML, but its logic would move to WebAssembly. As for the look and feel, nothing changes: according to the CTO, the application is identical to the current one.
Stanislav Vishnevskiy also published a 15-second video: two ThinkPad machines running Windows 11, the old Discord client on the left and the new one on the right, both launched cold. The Rust client shows the friends list before the Electron version has even finished its loading screen. "Lower RAM usage is only part of the story. Everything feels instant when you click; I can't go back.", he comments. The difference is really striking when you watch the video.
As for the timeline, you'll need to be patient. "The client is entering private testing soon. We're going to take the time to make sure it's stable and secure first.", says Ryan K. Rigney. Beyond the Windows version, a Linux release is reportedly in the works, while macOS is a little less clear, but it should follow too!
What do you think?
