Software pigs fly: PC memory is becoming more of an unattainable hardware product these days, which means software developers have to adapt. Discord, one of the worst offenders when it comes to excessive RAM usage, will apparently address this long-standing problem by ditching 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 recently confirmed that the popular messaging platform is soon getting a brand new desktop client. Unlike previous web-based versions, it should deliver significantly better performance thanks to its adoption of the Rust programming language.
Stanislav Vishnevskiy, co-founder and CTO of Discord, said the company has been using Rust since 2018 and uses the universal, memory-safe language in several parts of its infrastructure and products. Some parts of the current client are also written in Rust, but the entire app will apparently take longer to convert.
– Stanislav (@svishnevskiy) November 4, 2026
The Electron-based app will no longer be available, Vishnevskiy confirmed, as will React Native on mobile devices. Electron apps can take advantage of the prevalence of JavaScript and other popular web technologies, but are extremely performance intensive compared to C, Rust, or other native code. Each Electron app ships with its own copy of Chromium, meaning memory usage is always higher than native alternatives.
Vishnevskiy shared a screenshot from his system’s task manager, running the Discord Phoenix app with around 290MB of RAM. The Electron-based Discord is notorious for being a huge memory hog, wasting gigabytes of DRAM and forcing developers to resort to some questionable tricks to improve performance and efficiency.
The new Rust client will hopefully solve both problems. The mobile version of Discord will retain its current native interface, Vishnevskiy said, but use the same Rust code that is now adopted for the desktop version. The company would like to make a beta version available to users soon, but there is currently no specific time frame.
Discord’s push to make its app more efficient couldn’t have come at a better time. Plans for AI data centers are disrupting the chip supply chain, and PC DRAM products are now low on most manufacturers’ priority lists. According to TeamGroup CEO Chen Ching-wen, customers will soon no longer be able to buy loads of DDR4 or DDR5 RAM, no matter how much money they have.
