TL;DR:

  • Tauri 2.0 (stable since late 2024) supports Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android from a single codebase — your frontend is any web framework, your backend is Rust
  • Binaries are dramatically smaller than Electron (a Hello World Tauri app is ~2MB vs ~80MB for Electron) because Tauri uses the OS’s built-in WebView rather than bundling Chromium
  • The security model is explicit and capability-based — your web code can only invoke Rust commands you explicitly expose, with permissions checked at compile time; this is a meaningful improvement over Electron’s all-or-nothing IPC model

Electron made it possible to build desktop applications with web technology, and a lot of widely-used software — VS Code, Slack, Figma’s desktop client, 1Password — runs on it. The criticisms are well-established: large install sizes, high memory consumption, and a security model that has historically required careful discipline to keep the renderer process from accessing Node.js APIs it shouldn’t.

Tauri started as an alternative to Electron and in 2026, with Tauri 2.0 stable and mobile targets shipping, it has crossed from “interesting project” to “the default choice if you are starting a new cross-platform app today.”

What Tauri Is

Tauri is a framework for building desktop (and now mobile) applications where:

  • The UI is any web frontend — React, Vue, Svelte, SolidJS, vanilla JS — running in the OS’s native WebView (WebKit on macOS/iOS, WebView2 on Windows, WebKitGTK on Linux)
  • The backend is Rust, exposing functions to the frontend as “commands” via Tauri’s IPC system
  • The bridge between frontend and backend is explicit, typed, and permission-controlled

The OS WebView approach is the fundamental architectural difference from Electron. Instead of shipping Chromium, Tauri uses whatever browser engine the operating system provides. This is why Tauri binaries are small — a production app is typically 5—15MB instead of 80—150MB for Electron.

The tradeoff is WebView inconsistency across platforms. On Windows, WebView2 (Chromium-based, shipped with Windows 11 and available as a redistributable) is modern and consistent. On macOS, WebKit is also well-maintained. On Linux, WebKitGTK support is solid for most distributions but can be inconsistent on older or minimal installs. For apps targeting enterprise environments where you control the OS version, this is manageable.

Tauri 2.0 What Changed

Tauri 1.x was desktop-only. Tauri 2.0 added mobile targets (iOS and Android) in a meaningful way — the same Rust commands and frontend code can be used across all five platforms, with platform-specific plugins for camera, notifications, biometrics, and device APIs.

The plugin system is the other major addition. Tauri 2.0 ships with first-party plugins for: file system access, HTTP requests, shell command execution, system notifications, clipboard, global shortcuts, window management, autostart, and more. Community plugins cover Bluetooth, serial port, WebSockets, and most other native capabilities you might need.

Each plugin uses the Tauri permissions system — your app explicitly declares in capabilities/ config files which plugins and which plugin methods are accessible from the web context. If your app should never need to write to the filesystem, you simply don’t grant that permission and the capability doesn’t exist at runtime.

The Rust commands API is cleaner in 2.0. Commands are regular Rust functions annotated with #[tauri::command], accepting typed arguments and returning typed values. Error handling follows standard Rust patterns. The TypeScript bindings are auto-generated via tauri-specta or manually with the invoke helper.

Setting Up a New Project

npm create tauri-app@latest my-app
cd my-app
npm install
npm run tauri dev

This scaffolds a project with your choice of frontend framework and opens a development window with hot reload. The project structure is:

my-app/
  src/           # Frontend code (React/Vue/Svelte etc.)
  src-tauri/
    src/
      main.rs    # Tauri app entry point
      lib.rs     # Your Rust commands
    tauri.conf.json   # App configuration
    capabilities/     # Permission declarations
    Cargo.toml

A simple command that reads a file and returns its contents:

// src-tauri/src/lib.rs
#[tauri::command]
async fn read_config_file(app: tauri::AppHandle) -> Result<String, String> {
    let config_path = app.path().app_config_dir()
        .map_err(|e| e.to_string())?
        .join("config.json");
    
    std::fs::read_to_string(config_path)
        .map_err(|e| e.to_string())
}

pub fn run() {
    tauri::Builder::default()
        .invoke_handler(tauri::generate_handler![read_config_file])
        .run(tauri::generate_context!())
        .expect("error running app");
}

Calling it from the frontend:

import { invoke } from '@tauri-apps/api/core';

const config = await invoke<string>('read_config_file');

The capability declaration that allows this file read:

// src-tauri/capabilities/default.json
{
  "identifier": "default",
  "windows": ["main"],
  "permissions": [
    "core:default",
    "fs:read-app-config-dir"
  ]
}

If you call a command or use a plugin not listed in the active capabilities, Tauri blocks it at runtime and logs the error. This is the capability system in practice.

Security Model

The Electron security model requires developers to correctly configure contextIsolation, nodeIntegration, sandbox, and Content Security Policy settings — get any of these wrong and the renderer process may have more access than intended. History has produced a number of Electron apps with misconfigured security settings that allowed arbitrary code execution from malicious web content.

Tauri’s model is inverted. The web context has access to exactly the commands and plugins you explicitly declare. There is no way for web content to access the filesystem, make HTTP requests, or execute shell commands unless you’ve granted those permissions. The Rust compiler enforces this at build time — undeclared capabilities simply don’t compile into the binary.

This is a materially better security posture for apps that handle sensitive data. It’s also easier to audit: the capabilities/ directory is the complete list of everything the web context can do, readable in a few minutes.

Performance and Bundle Size

A production Tauri app built with React typically compiles to:

  • Windows: 4—8MB NSIS installer
  • macOS: 3—6MB .app bundle
  • Linux: 4—8MB AppImage or .deb

The same app in Electron would be 80—150MB because it includes a full Chromium runtime.

Memory usage follows a similar pattern. Tauri apps use the OS WebView process, which shares memory with the system browser. Electron apps run a separate Chromium process. For users running multiple Electron apps simultaneously, the memory cost is substantial.

Rust command performance is generally excellent — Rust is a systems language, and for CPU-bound tasks in the backend (file processing, cryptography, data analysis), Tauri backends run significantly faster than Electron’s Node.js runtime.

When Electron Still Makes Sense

Tauri’s WebView approach has one meaningful drawback: rendering behaviour can differ between platforms. If pixel-perfect consistency between Windows, macOS, and Linux is critical — for something like a design tool where layout precision matters — Electron’s Chromium gives you guaranteed rendering consistency. Tauri does not.

Teams that are deeply invested in Node.js for their backend logic also face a migration cost. Tauri’s backend is Rust — if your team has no Rust experience, there’s a learning curve. For simple apps with minimal native API usage, the Rust requirement might be overkill and Electron + careful security configuration is a reasonable alternative.

There is also a Tauri + Node.js bridge path (using a sidecar process) if you need Node.js capabilities in a Tauri app, but this adds complexity.

The Practical Verdict

Tauri 2.0 is the right default for new cross-platform desktop apps in 2026 if:

  • Your team can write some Rust, or is willing to learn for the backend layer
  • You don’t have strict cross-platform rendering consistency requirements
  • You care about install size and memory footprint
  • Security is a priority

The mobile support in 2.0 is a significant bonus if you want to ship to iOS and Android without a separate Flutter or React Native project. For apps that genuinely need to run across desktop and mobile, Tauri is now a credible single-codebase solution.

If you have an existing Electron app, migration is possible but not trivial — you’d need to rewrite Node.js backend logic in Rust or move it to a sidecar. For greenfield projects, Tauri is the more forward-looking choice.