November 28, 2025
Tiny apps, huge opinions
Electron vs. Tauri
Slim Tauri vs chunky Electron: fans feud over size, speed, and “is it ready yet”
TLDR: Dolt Workbench weighed Electron’s big-but-reliable approach against Tauri’s smaller, simpler setup. Commenters split: some love Tauri’s tiny size and Rust-friendly integrations, others blast missing Windows packaging and say it’s still heavy vs. true native, with Wails popping up as a surprise contender.
Dolt Workbench just aired its desktop drama: their SQL tool runs on Electron (the Chrome-based approach that makes apps big but predictable), and they’re eyeing Tauri (a leaner, Rust-powered route that uses your computer’s built-in browser view). The community didn’t hold back. One user flexed the diet numbers—“20MB if you drop Node.js”—while others warned that smaller doesn’t mean better. As one skeptic snarked, “lightweight compared to Electron isn’t actually lightweight.”
The Next.js twist added spice: Electron needs awkward workarounds like Nextron (now seemingly abandoned), while Tauri’s “just export it” approach made folks cheer for simplicity. Then came the Windows bombshell: “Lack of support for .appx and .msix bundles”—cue gasps, links, and disbelief. “Tauri is way less fully baked than I realized,” wrote one commenter, pointing to the issue.
Team Electron shouted plugins and battle-tested tooling (“Big companies use this!”), Team Tauri bragged native integrations (Rust talks to system libraries like a local), and the peanut gallery tossed in a wildcard: Wails. Someone even said they had more fun “vibe coding” with GPT‑4 using Wails, turning the thread into a three-way cage match.
Jokes flew about “Chromium calories” and “app Weight Watchers,” while the core fight stayed the same: Do you want predictable and heavy, or sleek and still growing up?
Key Points
- •Dolt Workbench is an open-source SQL workbench for MySQL, Postgres, Dolt, and Doltgres, built with Electron using a Next.js frontend and GraphQL.
- •Electron’s loose support for Next.js (due to SSR and API routing) led the team to use Nextron, which appears unmaintained and has caused bugs.
- •Tauri integrates more simply with Next.js by relying on static-site generation via output: 'export' in the Next config.
- •Electron bundles Chromium for UI rendering, providing consistent compatibility but significantly increasing app size (even simple apps ~150 MB).
- •Tauri uses system native webviews through the WRY library, yielding lighter apps but without a hard compatibility guarantee; issues are reported as rare on major OSes.