Software Pigs Do Fly: PC memory is becoming an increasingly unattainable hardware product these days, which means software developers will need to adapt. Discord, one of the worst offenders when it comes to excessive RAM use, is apparently going to tackle this long-standing issue by giving up on inefficient web-based development frameworks.
Microsoft is finally doing something about Windows 11's abysmal performance on lower-end systems, and third-party software developers are following suit. Discord's CTO has recently confirmed that the popular messaging platform is soon getting a brand-new desktop client. Unlike past web-based versions, it should deliver much better performance thanks to the adoption of the Rust programming language.
Discord co-founder and CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy said the company has been adopting Rust since 2018, using the general-purpose, memory-safe language in several parts of its infrastructure and products. Some parts of the current client are written in Rust as well, but converting the whole app is apparently going to take longer.
– Stanislav (@svishnevskiy) November 4, 2026
The Electron-based app is going away, Vishnevskiy confirmed, and so is React Native on mobile. Electron apps can exploit the pervasiveness of JavaScript and other popular web technologies, but they are extremely taxing on performance compared to C, Rust, or other native code. Every Electron app ships with its own copy of Chromium, which means memory usage is always going to be higher than with native alternatives.
Vishnevskiy shared a screenshot from his system's Task Manager in which the "Discord Phoenix" app is humming along at around 290 MB of RAM. Electron-based Discord is notorious for being a massive memory hog, wasting gigabytes of DRAM and forcing developers to resort to some questionable tricks to try and improve performance and efficiency.
The new Rust client will hopefully solve both issues. Discord's mobile version will retain its current native UI, Vishnevskiy said, but will share the same Rust code now being adopted for the desktop release. The company wants to put a beta version in users' hands soon, although no specific timeframe has been given at this point.
Discord's push to make its app more efficient could not have come at a better time. AI data center plans are ravaging the chip supply chain, and PC DRAM products are now at the bottom of most manufacturers' priority lists. According to TeamGroup CEO Chen Ching-wen, customers will soon be unable to purchase any quantity of DDR4 or DDR5 RAM no matter how much money they have.