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Alex Spinov
Alex Spinov

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Tauri 2 Has a Free API That Lets You Build Desktop Apps With Web Tech — No Electron Bloat

#tauri #desktop #rust #webdev

The Desktop App Problem

Electron apps eat 200MB+ of RAM just sitting in your taskbar. Your users notice. Your laptop fan notices.

Tauri 2 fixes this. Built on Rust, it wraps your existing HTML/CSS/JS in a native webview — your app ships at 2-5MB and uses 10x less memory than Electron.

What Tauri 2 Gives You (Free)

The IPC Bridge — Web Meets Native

Tauri's invoke() API bridges JavaScript and Rust:

import { invoke } from '@tauri-apps/api/core';

// Call Rust from JavaScript — that simple
const result = await invoke('greet', { name: 'World' });
console.log(result); // 'Hello, World!'
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The Rust side:

#[tauri::command]
fn greet(name: &str) -> String {
    format!("Hello, {}!", name)
}
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File System Access 

import { readTextFile, writeTextFile } from '@tauri-apps/plugin-fs';

const content = await readTextFile('config.json');
await writeTextFile('output.txt', 'Generated data');
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System Tray & Notifications 

import { sendNotification } from '@tauri-apps/plugin-notification';

sendNotification({
  title: 'Task Complete',
  body: 'Your build finished successfully'
});
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Deep Links & Auto-Updates

Tauri 2 includes plugins for:

  • Deep linking — register custom URL schemes (myapp://action)
  • Auto-updater — ship updates without app store review
  • Clipboard — read/write system clipboard
  • HTTP client — make requests without CORS issues
  • Shell — execute system commands safely

Tauri 2 vs Electron — The Numbers

Metric Electron Tauri 2
Bundle size 150-250MB 2-10MB
RAM usage 150-300MB 20-50MB
Startup time 2-5s <1s
Language JavaScript Rust + JS

Quick Start 

npm create tauri-app@latest my-app
cd my-app
npm install
npm run tauri dev
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Works with React, Vue, Svelte, SolidJS, or vanilla HTML.

Why This Matters

Electron won the 'build desktop apps with web tech' race, but it won with brute force — shipping an entire Chromium browser per app. Tauri 2 proves you can have native performance AND web developer experience.

Your users shouldn't need 16GB of RAM to run a to-do app.

Building data-heavy desktop apps? Check out my web scraping actors on Apify Store — get structured data feeds for your applications. For custom solutions, email spinov001@gmail.com.

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