--- title: "Why is Discord rewriting its app in Rust?" description: "Discord's CTO says Discord is moving its whole app to Rust and that Electron goes away on desktop. We expect it to be fast, but on desktop it also ends the client mods and themes people use to declutter Discord and make it their own." url: "https://fluxer.com/help/discord-rust-rewrite" language: "en" last_updated: "2026-11-05" category: "About Fluxer" --- > Index of Fluxer's official pages for AI agents: https://fluxer.com/llms.txt > Index of this topic: https://fluxer.com/help/category/about/llms.txt > Links to Fluxer pages go to their Markdown versions when they have one. For other Fluxer help, policy or blog links, remove any #section part and add .md to the end. # Why is Discord rewriting its app in Rust? Discord's CTO says Discord is moving its whole app to Rust and that Electron goes away on desktop. We expect it to be fast, but on desktop it also ends the client mods and themes people use to declutter Discord and make it their own. Discord is moving its whole app to Rust, and its desktop and mobile apps will share app code, according to its co-founder and CTO, Stanislav Vishnevskiy. He wrote on X on November 4, 2026 that getting the whole app onto Rust was "the holy grail".[^cto] He added that Electron goes away on desktop and the mobile apps keep a native interface. The new desktop app uses GPUI, a Rust UI framework from the team behind the Zed editor.[^cto][^gpui] We expect the new app to be fast and efficient, but it isn't all good news for the people who use Discord every day. Client mods and CSS themes won't work in the new desktop app, so you won't be able to strip out clutter, upsells and ads or make Discord look and work the way you like, and that [works in favor of Discord's growing advertising business](https://fluxer.com/help/discord-rust-rewrite.md). ## What did Discord announce? In a post on X with a Task Manager screenshot of the new app, Vishnevskiy wrote "a lot of our infra, voice tech, and even some of the current client is already Rust, the holy grail was getting the whole client there." He added "That means Electron goes away, and so does React Native, mobile keeps native UI but shares app code with desktop via Rust."[^cto] The Verge reported the next day that the screenshot showed Discord's new desktop app on Windows using 290 MB of memory, and wrote that with the current Windows app, memory use "can easily hit 1GB or more" once you've joined just a few servers.[^verge] He also wrote that the new app isn't built with Tauri, a framework for apps that use the system's web view.[^cto] Asked whether message components would look the same on desktop and mobile, he replied "The app looks and works identically to the current one".[^same] A Discord developer was asked on Bluesky whether the new code was only the web view host or also the interface, and he replied "the whole app".[^advaith] GPUI is made by the Zed team for Zed, and Vishnevskiy wrote that Discord has its own patches on top of it and will see what it can share back.[^patches] Zed replied "happy to chat".[^zed] ## When can I try Discord's new app? Discord hasn't given a date for its new app. Vishnevskiy wrote that Discord hopes to start testing it with users "soon™", and there's no blog post or feature list for it yet.[^cto] ## Will Discord still work in a browser? Discord plans to keep a version of its app that works in a web browser. When someone on X wrote that they were curious about the web version of Discord, Vishnevskiy replied "We will have an HTML renderer for it, but logic will be WASM instead of JS."[^web] WASM is short for WebAssembly, a format that lets code written in languages like Rust run in a web browser. Whether [CSS themes in the browser](https://fluxer.com/help/discord-rust-app-client-mods.md) keep working depends on the HTML that the new renderer makes, and Discord hasn't said yet. Activities, the games and apps you can open together in a call, will use the web view that comes with your operating system, according to another of his replies.[^activities] ## Is it coming to Linux and macOS? Discord hasn't said when the new app comes to Linux or macOS, and the screenshot Vishnevskiy posted is from Windows. Asked whether it would have better Linux support for noise canceling and Go Live streaming, he replied "We expect it to be better."[^linux] Discord's iOS and Android apps are changing too, and Vishnevskiy wrote that they will keep a native interface and [share their app code with the desktop app](https://fluxer.com/help/discord-rust-rewrite.md). ## How big is a rewrite like this? A rewrite is a big job, because the new app must match every feature of the current one while new ones keep coming, and Discord's app has grown since it launched in 2015.[^64bit] Discord's current app keeps getting faster, and its patch notes list work on the app's speed and memory use. In February 2026, it shipped "a dramatic improvement to render performance on desktop" after finding slow CSS selectors.[^feb] In September 2026, Discord said upgrading to Electron 42 and changing how it uses Electron cut median CPU use by about 17%.[^sep] In June 2025, Discord moved one of its data stores from JavaScript to Rust and wrote that it "saw incremental gains across a suite of performance and reliability KPIs like memory/CPU usage and crashes".[^jun] ## Will Discord's new app be good? We expect Discord's new app to turn out well, because Discord has used Rust since 2018 and a lot of its infrastructure and voice technology already runs on it.[^cto] In 2025 it also started moving some of the core data stores in all of its apps to shared Rust code.[^jun] Discord's engineers have kept improving the current app for years, as [its patch notes on speed show](https://fluxer.com/help/discord-rust-rewrite.md), and we expect the same care to go into the new one. ## What changes for people who use Discord? Vishnevskiy wrote that the new app looks and works the same as the current one.[^same] Client mods such as Vencord and BetterDiscord [won't work in the new desktop app](https://fluxer.com/help/discord-rust-app-client-mods.md), and neither will the CSS themes they load, because they change files in the Electron app. Mods that declutter Discord, hide cosmetics, Nitro offers and Quests, or turn off its analytics [stop working too](https://fluxer.com/help/discord-rust-app-client-mods.md), and [what that costs you](https://fluxer.com/help/discord-rust-rewrite.md) goes well beyond the mods themselves. In Discord's own settings, you can still [turn off personalized Quests and hide some topics](https://fluxer.com/help/discord-quests.md), and the "Use data to improve Discord" switch [changes how Discord uses your data](https://fluxer.com/help/discord-rust-app-client-mods.md). Following what changes in each new build [will also be much harder](https://fluxer.com/help/discord-rust-app-client-mods.md) with a compiled app. In 2022, AccessWorld called Discord's current app "a model example" of a complex web app that works with screen readers, and Discord hasn't said how its new app will work with them.[^afb] GPUI [started adding screen reader support in May 2026](https://fluxer.com/help/discord-rust-app-screen-readers.md). ## What do you give up for a lighter app? Replacing Electron, JavaScript and more than ten years of web code with an app that uses less memory and CPU sounds like a good deal, and if you only want Discord to run well, it may be one. The cost is how much say you have over the app on your own computer. If you want to declutter Discord, hide cosmetics, Nitro offers and Quests, block its analytics or change how it looks, you can [do that with a client mod](https://fluxer.com/help/discord-rust-app-client-mods.md), even though Discord's terms forbid mods.[^discord-terms] The new desktop app ends that. Its interface is compiled Rust code, so there's no JavaScript to patch and no CSS to restyle, and as of November 5, 2026, Discord hasn't said whether it will offer another way to do what mods do. A compiled app can still be taken apart with reverse-engineering tools, but that's far harder than reading the JavaScript of today's app. Fewer people will be able to see what the app does, change it or build mods for it, or follow what changes in each build. Discord's [web version stays](https://fluxer.com/help/discord-rust-rewrite.md), with its logic moving to WebAssembly. Mods that patch its JavaScript, like the ones in Vesktop, keep working only until the new web version ships, and Discord hasn't said whether browser CSS themes will still work with it. We think this takes control away from the people who use Discord and hands it to Discord. Whatever Discord's reasons for the rewrite, the result works in favor of its [advertising business](https://fluxer.com/help/is-discord-an-advertising-company.md), because people lose the mods and themes they used to strip out cosmetics, upsells and ads. That's why we say [Discord is in effect killing client mods](https://fluxer.com/help/is-discord-killing-client-mods.md). ## Will Fluxer do the same? Fluxer's desktop app [uses Electron](https://fluxer.com/help/is-fluxer-electron.md), and we have [no plans to rewrite it in Rust](https://fluxer.com/help/will-fluxer-rewrite-in-rust.md). We've started work on a desktop version of our native iOS and Android app, [Fluxer Lite](https://fluxer.com/help/fluxer-lite.md) (working name), and our Electron app stays fully supported and keeps getting updates. Fluxer's apps are [open source](https://fluxer.com/help/open-source.md), and you're free to [mod them](https://fluxer.com/help/mod-fluxer.md) and build your own versions. A native Rust app can use less memory and start faster than an Electron app, but how fast an app feels [depends on much more than the language it's written in](https://fluxer.com/help/will-discord-be-faster-than-fluxer.md). Fluxer Lite is compiled to native code too, and you can read [how we expect it to compare](https://fluxer.com/help/fluxer-lite.md). ## Sources [^cto]: [Post by Stanislav Vishnevskiy](https://x.com/svishnevskiy/status/2118081920194203799), X, published 2026-11-04, accessed 2026-11-05. His X profile says he is Discord's CTO and co-founder. [^same]: [Reply by Stanislav Vishnevskiy](https://x.com/svishnevskiy/status/2118092321346756616), X, published 2026-11-04, accessed 2026-11-05. [^advaith]: [Reply by advaith](https://bsky.app/profile/advaith.bsky.social/post/3mzjdyubgtc2r), Bluesky, published 2026-11-04, accessed 2026-11-05. His Bluesky profile says he is an apps platform developer at Discord. [^web]: [Reply by Stanislav Vishnevskiy](https://x.com/svishnevskiy/status/2118084283650994414), X, published 2026-11-04, accessed 2026-11-05. [^activities]: [Reply by Stanislav Vishnevskiy](https://x.com/svishnevskiy/status/2118088118477984139), X, published 2026-11-04, accessed 2026-11-05. He wrote "We use the native webview similar to Tauri". [^linux]: [Reply by Stanislav Vishnevskiy](https://x.com/svishnevskiy/status/2118088803831402838), X, published 2026-11-04, accessed 2026-11-05. [^patches]: [Reply by Stanislav Vishnevskiy](https://x.com/svishnevskiy/status/2118084029304230053), X, published 2026-11-04, accessed 2026-11-05. [^zed]: [Reply by Zed](https://x.com/zeddotdev/status/2118093271679578403), X, published 2026-11-04, accessed 2026-11-05. It says "happy to chat". [^gpui]: [GPUI](https://www.gpui.rs/), Zed Industries, accessed 2026-11-05. The site calls GPUI "A fast, hybrid immediate and retained mode, GPU-accelerated UI framework for Rust". [^feb]: [Discord Patch Notes](https://discord.com/blog/discord-patch-notes-february-4-2026), Discord, published 2026-02-04, accessed 2026-11-05. [^sep]: [Discord Update](https://discord.com/blog/discord-update-september-25-2026), Discord, published 2026-09-25, accessed 2026-11-05. It reports "a small ~4% increase in p50 memory usage" from the same upgrade. [^jun]: [Discord Patch Notes](https://discord.com/blog/discord-patch-notes-june-3-2025), Discord, published 2025-06-03, accessed 2026-11-05. [^64bit]: [How Discord seamlessly upgraded millions of users to 64-bit architecture](https://discord.com/blog/how-discord-seamlessly-upgraded-millions-of-users-to-64-bit-architecture), Christopher Harris, Discord, published 2024-12-13, accessed 2026-11-05. [^afb]: [Call and Chat with Discord: an Accessibility Review](https://afb.org/aw/23/12/18148), Aaron Preece, AccessWorld, American Foundation for the Blind, published in the December 2022 issue, accessed 2026-11-05. [^discord-terms]: [Terms of Service](https://discord.com/terms), Discord, effective 2025-09-29, last updated 2025-08-29, accessed 2026-11-05. [^verge]: [Discord is ditching Electron and its new app uses less RAM](https://www.theverge.com/news/1027379/discord-ditching-electron-web-app), Tom Warren, The Verge, published 2026-11-05, accessed 2026-11-05. --- Canonical page: https://fluxer.com/help/discord-rust-rewrite Last updated on November 5, 2026