January 27, 2026
Rust baggage, Swift swagger
Velox: A Port of Tauri to Swift by Miguel de Icaza
Swift gets Tauri vibes—fans cheer, skeptics yell “wrapper!”
TLDR: Velox lets Swift developers build web-style desktop apps while still leaning on Rust behind the scenes. Comments explode over whether it’s a true port or just a wrapper, with safety worries about “unsafe” Rust, shoutouts to Dioxus, and questions about Swift beyond Apple.
Miguel de Icaza just dropped Velox, a Swift-flavored way to build desktop apps with web tech (think websites running as apps) while using Swift for the backend. He quips he loves Rust but doesn’t love writing apps in it—cue the comment fireworks. The community instantly split: is this a real port or just a fancy Swift wrapper around Rust? One user poked the bear with “A ‘port’ or ‘a nice Swift API’?” after noticing Velox still calls Rust’s build tool (Cargo) behind the scenes.
Things escalated when another commenter pointed to a 3,200-line Rust file packed with “close to 100 unsafe calls,” sparking safety debates and eye-rolls from Rust purists. There was name confusion with Facebook’s Velox engine, and a drive-by hot take declared Dioxus—another Rust-based app framework—the more interesting project. Meanwhile, curious onlookers asked if Swift is even good outside Apple land, wondering if you can do lower-level “systems” work without Apple-only frameworks. The vibe? Excited Swift fans loving Velox’s dev tools and hot reloads, while Rust loyalists side-eye the “port” label. And yes, the memes arrived: “Swiftified Tauri,” “port with Rust carry-on,” and “wrapper or wizardry?” The comments are the show.
Key Points
- •Velox is introduced as a Swift-based port of Tauri for building desktop apps with HTML frontends and Swift backends.
- •A Swift package build-tool plugin automatically compiles the Rust FFI crate, invoking Cargo with correct configurations.
- •Cargo runs in offline mode by default; setting VELOX_CARGO_ONLINE=1 enables network fetching for builds.
- •Velox includes a CLI with commands for project initialization, development with hot reloading, and production builds.
- •The CLI supports creating macOS app bundles, generating Info.plist from velox.json, and bundling assets and executables.