Discord is undertaking a significant shift in its underlying technology, moving its desktop client away from Electron and towards Rust. This transition is expected to yield substantial improvements in memory usage and application speed. Discord's CTO, Stanislav Vishnevskiy, demonstrated a version of the new client running on approximately 290 MB of memory, a notable reduction from the often 500 MB or more the current client consumes. This move aligns with a broader trend of other platforms, including Xbox, Epic, and Steam, implementing similar performance upgrades.
Electron, the framework Discord has used, builds desktop applications from web technologies like JavaScript and is based on Chromium, the same engine powering Google Chrome. This approach, while facilitating cross-platform development, introduces a significant overhead. The switch to Rust aims to address this by utilizing a more memory-efficient and performant language.
Vishnevskiy indicated that while some speculated Discord would adopt the Tauri framework for its Rust transition, the company is actually using a custom-patched version of GPUI, a Rust-written framework. This development has been in the works since 2018, with Rust already powering significant portions of Discord's infrastructure, including its voice technology and parts of the current client. The ultimate goal is to migrate the entire client to Rust, which will also involve phasing out React Native for mobile development, although native UIs will be retained on mobile while sharing app code with the desktop version via Rust.
Beyond memory reduction, the new Rust-based client is also poised to offer a snappier user experience. Initial demonstrations by Vishnevskiy showcased significantly faster boot times, with the new client launching in an estimated six seconds compared to considerably longer times for the current version. This performance boost is particularly welcome as the gaming industry, like many tech sectors, grapples with resource demands and the rising costs of hardware.
While these claims originate from Discord's leadership, the company plans to roll out the new client for user testing soon. The prospect of a more resource-efficient and faster Discord is a promising development for users who have experienced the application's high memory footprint. This initiative follows similar optimization efforts by other major gaming platforms like Epic and Steam, highlighting a growing industry focus on software efficiency.