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SENU started as Electron+React. The first signed installer was around 150MB. I rewrote the core in Rust and moved the shell to Tauri 2 — same surface, same feature set. The signed installer is now around 13MB.
That's not optimization for sport. It's the difference between "yet another Electron app" and "a tool I'm not embarrassed to ship to a stranger's server."
When Electron is still the right call
- You're moving a complex existing web codebase to desktop.
- You need feature parity with a browser (full DOM, web workers, the WebView2 edge cases).
- The team writes JS and doesn't want to write Rust. Honest answer.
When Tauri pays off
- System tool: SSH client, file manager, dev utility. Users notice the size.
- You're happy writing Rust for anything heavy and JS only for the surface.
- You care about cold-start time on average laptops.
The build pipeline is rougher in Tauri-land — fewer guides, more "read the issue tracker." That's the real cost, not the language.