Tauri

Tauri is an open-source framework for building desktop applications using web technologies. It aims to provide a smaller, more secure, and faster alternative to Electron by combining a system webview with a Rust-based backend.

Architecture and workflow: Developers write the frontend using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and run it inside a lightweight system webview. The backend is implemented in Rust and runs in a separate process; communication between the frontend and backend occurs over a secure IPC channel with a defined API surface. The final application packages the frontend assets and the runtime, producing a native binary.

Development process and APIs: The Tauri CLI scaffolds projects and offers commands for development and production builds. The frontend framework choice is flexible (for example React, Vue, Svelte, or Angular). Through the Rust backend, apps can access native capabilities such as file system access, dialogs, notifications, clipboard, window management, and system tray. A plugin system allows extending the runtime with additional APIs.

Security model: Tauri emphasizes security through a restricted API surface and secure communication between the webview and the Rust backend. It supports content security policies and API whitelisting to minimize exposure to untrusted code, helping reduce the risk surface compared with more monolithic runtimes.

Platform support and packaging: Tauri targets Windows, macOS, and Linux, relying on native webviews rather than bundling a separate browser. This typically yields smaller binary sizes and lower resource usage than some alternatives.

Ecosystem and usage: The project is maintained as an open-source ecosystem with community contributions and plugins, and is used for a variety of cross-platform desktop applications.