Discord is ditching Electron and its new app uses less RAM
Discord is transitioning its desktop application from Electron to Rust, addressing the performance issues that have plagued the platform for years. Electron, while enabling cross-platform development through web technologies, is notoriously resource-intensive—a limitation Discord users have long complained about in terms of excessive RAM consumption.
The shift represents the culmination of Discord’s gradual adoption of Rust since 2018, when the company began using the language for infrastructure and voice technology. Discord’s chief technology officer Stanislav Vishnevskiy explained that moving “the whole client” to Rust was the company’s “holy grail,” with portions of the current client already powered by the language.
Rust’s design prioritizes speed and memory safety, making it well-suited for a real-time communication platform serving millions of concurrent users. The migration should deliver tangible performance improvements, reducing RAM usage and enhancing overall system efficiency for Discord’s desktop user base across Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms.