Discord’s 300 MB Rust Rewrite: Real Progress or Just a Promising Number?

One tiny message, two very different foundations, and why a smaller memory number is only the beginning.

AI-generated image created for illustration purposes.

Discord is rebuilding its desktop client in Rust, and Electron is on the way out. An early development build, shared by Discord’s CTO, reportedly uses roughly 300 megabytes of memory.

That number sounds great. But I think the better question is this: how do you make an app lighter while keeping voice calls, screen sharing, and everything people already depend on?

To answer it, let’s follow one tiny message through the old foundation and the new one, then make the job harder.

The Passenger: One Word, “hello”

Imagine a friend sends you a message: hello.

The app has to do three things. It stores the message, works out where it belongs in the conversation, and draws it on your screen. That is the whole job, and it looks tiny.

The Old Vehicle: Electron

Electron lets developers build desktop apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, the same tools used to build websites. Under the hood:

• Chromium provides the browser engine.