Discord Is Rebuilding Its Desktop App in Rust and Dropping Electron

Discord, the voice and chat app that most PC gamers keep running in the background, is getting a major rebuild. Discord co-founder and CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy confirmed this week that the company is moving its client to Rust and dropping Electron, the web-based framework its desktop app has used for years, according to reports from Windows Report and GameRiv.

What Discord announced

In a post on X on November 4, Vishnevskiy explained that Discord has been an early adopter of Rust since 2018, and that much of its infrastructure, voice technology and even parts of the current client already use it. "The holy grail was getting the whole client there," he wrote, adding that this means "Electron goes away."

According to the reports:

• The new desktop client is built with GPUI, a Rust UI framework, instead of Electron. Vishnevskiy specifically noted that Discord chose GPUI rather than Tauri, another Rust-based option.
• On mobile, Discord plans to move away from React Native while keeping native interfaces, with desktop and mobile sharing more app code through Rust.

The RAM numbers

On November 5, Discord's official account shared a side-by-side comparison of the current app and the new version in development. Vishnevskiy also posted a Windows 11 Task Manager screenshot showing the early build using about 290 MB of RAM while running two accounts, and a video highlighting faster startup times. "Clicking around feels instant, I can't go back," he wrote.

That's a striking figure for an app known for heavy memory use. Electron apps bundle a copy of the Chromium browser engine, which is one reason they tend to use more RAM than native applications.

Still, the 290 MB figure comes from an early demo, not independent testing. Real-world memory use will depend on how many servers you're in, what you're doing and how the final app is built.

When can you try it?

There's no release date yet. Vishnevskiy said Discord hopes to begin testing with users soon, but neither he nor Discord has said when the switch will be complete.

Why it matters for PC gamers

Every megabyte matters when Discord runs alongside a demanding game. A lighter client could free up memory and reduce background overhead, especially on systems with 16 GB of RAM or less.

The move is also part of a broader trend. Launchers and companion apps are under pressure to get faster: Microsoft just announced that its updated Xbox PC app launches up to 60% faster. We'll test the new Discord client once a public build is available.