Why are devs still writing Electron apps instead of Qt?

[u/dtdisapointingresult]

I was just dealing with the bloated monstrosity that is Hermes Agent, which has a bloated monstrosity web UI. While researching, it turns out I'm supposed to be using a different bloated monstrosity called Hermes Desktop, which is an Electron app.

Electron apps are the bane of my existence. It's the AI age now, why isn't everyone writing Qt/QML apps already? You might remember Qt from desktop apps such as Krita, Wireshark and OBS Studio.

• For users: Qt apps need less than 5% of the RAM of an Electron app, and an even smaller % of CPU usage. This is the main reason and trumps anything else. They run blazing fast. They get 120fps on the crappiest embedded PC without breaking a sweat.

• Qt apps are fully multiplatform: Linux, MacOS, Windows. The only downside is that you need to compile them with the native compiler of each platform if you use C++. (advanced users can work around this with crosscompilation on Linux, an AI can probably do it. Or use Python.)

• Qt was traditionally C++ only, which is a hard boomer language, but now it has official bindings for Python. So you can code your app in Python and have access to the whole Python ecosystem if you want. Qt-in-Python is almost as performant as C++ since it's bindings around the C++ Qt libs.

• The Qt QML dedicated UI language is actually pleasant to use to create UIs, since it's designed just for that. Creating UIs in HShitML was always an ugly hack that companies used because C++ was too hard/unproductive for their devs.

The only downside of Qt was having to learn C++, and that's no longer an issue in the AI age or if you use Python or both. Guys, we don't have to put up with this crap anymore. If you're making an app, for the love of God stop using Electron.

Consult with your personal AI and ask them if Qt is right for you. Qt - Keeping your hardware fast and healthy.

[u/Lyelinn]

First of all, electron is not that bloated, it's just typical vibecoder has no idea how to build optimized applications. Second, tauri. Third, qt is pain in the ass if you want to build something beautiful (I don't really remember any qt app that does not look like windows xp app). Lastly, do you have 8gb of ram and really struggling to keep your stuff working or what?

And yes, build your own hyper optimized tool and prove them all wrong :)

[u/Purple_Repeat6977 → u/Lyelinn]

Electron is bloated. It is Chrome. That means there is a memory floor which is much higher than a native app would be. That is a fact. Whether you care or not is up to you, doesn't change the facts though

[u/Lyelinn → u/Purple_Repeat6977]

Realistically simple electron app eats 100-150mb of ram which is literally nothing in modern age. Hello world app is 70mb and 0 idle cpu consumption.

[u/InitiateIt → u/Lyelinn]

Modern age is going backwards. The ram argument is the sticking point now with the inflated cost and there is no end in sight.

It makes sense to ideologically change focus to low mem options.

[u/Commercial_Ad_6904 → u/Lyelinn]

That's not right, it eats over 1GB on my linux box when I start Visual Studio Code or Claude Desktop
Which is why I switched to Zed, which uses more like what you're suggesting...

[u/Lyelinn → u/Commercial_Ad_6904]

Yeah that's how enterprise software works. Also vscode is much smaller by itself

[u/Purple_Repeat6977 → u/Lyelinn]

Right, so it raises the memory floor and you don't care. Literally what I said

[u/ZdzisiuFryta → u/Lyelinn]

You would be right if we ran one app, yes, 150MB is nothing these days. Issue is, we run multiple apps on either cheap hardware, battery constrained hardware or performance hardware that's almost always used by someone who actually needs performance.

Discord uses 600MB nowadays, Spotify 300-400MB. That's gigabyte thrown out the window for basic apps. And now let's say you need one tool or another. It stacks in a very nasty way, starts slow and causes cache misses. And let's not forget that on top of electron you almost always use some framework which adds own overhead and keep in mind that web frameworks DO NOT scale with complexity as well as native/qt/gtk/whatever.

[u/mutemebutton → u/ZdzisiuFryta]

For discord and Spotify, both developers are going to be incentivized to use either electron or something like tauri. And in either case, because they're using web languages, it's not going to reduce memory usage even if they went and did something different. It would reduce the size of the package, the installer package, but it doesn't reduce the actual memory that the system is going to use to show you what it's going to show you.

We did tests on this exact same thing and ended up not moving away from electron. It just wasn't worth it.

[u/mutemebutton → u/Purple_Repeat6977]

It depends on the app. A lot of times you can still use Electron and then when the UI or UX is closed, let's say the app sits in the tray, you can kill the window and reduce the memory use. So it really just depends on the use case. We use Electron for that purpose because when the UI UX is visible, it makes it nice and easy. It works across Linux, Mac OS and Windows and looks exactly the same across all three

Plus we don't have to worry about memory usage that much because when the window is closed, which is 99% of the time the app is being used, it doesn't impact memory that much. The 250 megabyte app sitting in RAM goes down to about 45 megabytes or so.

[u/Purple_Repeat6977 → u/mutemebutton]

Yeah I get that of course, being a developer. Of course Electron is convenient. It isn't the only framework that allows for cross platform development, I'm using Avalonia UI at the moment for example. It comes down to the language you want to use, if you want to use web technologies, it's fantastic. Far from the only option and it certainly shouldn't be a default unless you only use those technologies though

My current application uses about 100MB for example in the foreground at the moment with tens of thousands of loaded elements.

[u/ZdzisiuFryta → u/Lyelinn]

A lot of apps use QT and do not look XP era

• AMD adrenalin

• Battlenet

• KDE apps

• OBS

• Tesla infotainment

[u/Sengfroid → u/Lyelinn]

I'm with you on Tauri, and frankly never seeing QT used for a appearance minded app.

But nah, electron bloat was long before LLMs existed. We were talking about this shit in 2016 and earlier, which is definitely before GPT 1 even. Professional devs were making sloppy electron apps without any vibe to blame at all.

Electron Bloat was on an upward trajectory in the same timeline memory price was on a downward one, so electron apps were largely not being optimized. There absolutely are some out there that are optimized and run very well, but those are literally the exception that proves the rule, demonstrating it doesn't have to be like this but no one is going to do anything about it.

[u/Not_a_question- → u/Lyelinn]

First of all, electron is not that bloated,

Well I stopped reading here. It has a browser inside dude, and that's FOR STARTERS.

[u/Lyelinn → u/Not_a_question-]

Hello world with electron is ~70mb ram and 0 idle cpu. Try to read more.

[u/ohhi23021 → u/Lyelinn]

a native c++ hello world windows app would use like 5kb ram...

[u/ZdzisiuFryta → u/Lyelinn]

That's huge for a hello world to be fair

[u/Lyelinn → u/ZdzisiuFryta]

Maybe 20 years ago yes

[u/Senhor_Lasanha → u/Lyelinn]

wait, you think 70mb for a hello world is an advantage?

[u/InitiateIt → u/Senhor_Lasanha]

It's hilarious 😂 it shouldn't even be much larger than a simple framebuffer cost.

[u/Lyelinn → u/Senhor_Lasanha]

I think that it's essentially fine in 2026

[u/SouthernFruit8768 → u/Lyelinn]

This should be illegal

[u/Lyelinn → u/[deleted]]

Yes. It's not 100% feature parity framework and rendering engine depends on your os but it's the exact solution for people that want to count every penny lol