I just want to say that you can very easily build a desktop application wrapping ssb-browser using Tauri. I used @arj chat demo, and it took me about 10 minutes to get it all working.

The application is packaged as a macOS Application bundle and weights 8.5mb. Yeah, that is it, less than 10mb.

Memory usage also looks ok:

Continuing on this trend of searching for Electron alternatives.

Neutralino JS appears to be working as well. The application loads and appears to work. The build command creates multiple binaries by default. It creates builds for Windows, macOS (x86_64), Linux. There is a little resources file resources.neu which is like an ASAR file for Electron, you just bundle it with the binary and it works. The builds are quite small. On macOS it is 1.8mb for the binary and 3.7mb for the resources.

memory usage appears OK as well:

It looks very similar to Tauri. Don't know who inspired who. :-)

Cool! I did a survey of the electron alternatives some years ago and couldn't find much.
Does this work because you're not running any fs stuff with Tauri?

@mix.desktop exactly! I opted to use #ssb-browser demos because I know they run on a webview without the need for NodeJS APIs or filesystem access.

Both Tauri and NeutralinoJS provide their own API for things such as filesystem access, it is just not the NodeJS API. Maybe a shim or polyfill could be used that allows NodeJS-based SSB stuff to run on these systems but this required more time than what I had at hand.

It's an old argument @zelf !
Many nerds (fairly) make the "resource hog" argument, while other nerds make the "accessibility" argument. i.e. all good running a light client that run from the terminal, but that's not accessible enough for the people I'm trying to serve.

The sweet spot would be a way to make installers for all platforms (accessible), which just uses existing tools in the OS to allow you to interact (e.g. a web browser like firefox)

For me it is about having options. I don't want the Electron-based SSB software to go away, I don't want to replace them. What I for people to have multiple options so that those who want to use non-Electron apps have something they can use.