Developer shrinks macOS app from 289 MB to 15 MB by switching Electron to Tauri 2

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A developer rebuilt WatchMe, a macOS menu-bar process-monitoring app, using Tauri 2 after its Electron-based bundle grew to 289 MB — nearly all of which was an embedded Chromium browser. The migration, completed in a single day on September 10, reduced the app bundle by 94.7%, bringing it down to just 15 MB and the distributable DMG to 3.7 MB. Switching to Tauri eliminated the need for a preload script and IPC channel configuration, replacing them with direct Rust commands, while the npm dependency count dropped from 309 packages to 73. A 579-line packaged-app test harness was also removed, as the underlying logic was ported to plain, independently testable code. The developer noted that Tauri's core advantage is bundle size reduction by leveraging the OS's built-in WebView rather than shipping a full browser runtime.

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