What is Tauri?

Prerelease Software

This documentation is for the prereleased version of Tauri 2.0 and is subject to change as development continues. If you’re looking for Tauri 1.0 documentation visit https://tauri.app.

Tauri is a framework for building tiny, fast binaries for all major desktop and mobile platforms. Developers can integrate any frontend framework that compiles to HTML, JavaScript, and CSS for building their user experience while leveraging languages such as Rust, Swift, and Kotlin for backend logic when needed.

Get started building with create-tauri-app by using one of the below commands. Be sure to follow the prerequisites guide to install all of the dependencies required by Tauri and then view the Frontend Configuration guides for recommended frontend configurations.

Bash

sh <(curl https://create.tauri.app/sh) --alpha

PowerShell

$env:CTA_ARGS="--alpha"; irm https://create.tauri.app/ps | iex

npm

npm create tauri-app@latest -- --alpha

Yarn

yarn create tauri-app --alpha

pnpm

pnpm create tauri-app --alpha

Cargo

cargo install create-tauri-app
cargo create-tauri-app --alpha

After you’ve created your first app you can explore the different features and recipes of Tauri in the List of Features & Recipes.

Why Tauri?

Tauri has 3 main advantages for developers to build upon:

• Secure foundation for building apps
• Smaller bundle size by using the system’s native webview
• Flexibility for developers to use any frontend and bindings for multiple languages

Learn more about the Tauri philosophy in the Tauri 1.0 blog post.

Secure Foundation

By being built on Rust, Tauri is able to take advantage of the memory, thread, and type-safety offered by Rust. Apps built on Tauri can automatically get those benefits even without needing to be developed by Rust experts.

Tauri also undergoes a security audit for major and minor releases. This not only covers code in the Tauri organization, but also for upstream dependencies that Tauri relies on. Of course this doesn’t mitigate all risks, but it provides a solid foundation for developers to build on top of.

Read the Tauri security policy and the Tauri 1.0 audit report.

Smaller App Size

Tauri apps take advantage of the web view already available on every user’s system. A Tauri app only contains the code and assets specific for that app and doesn’t need to bundle a browser engine with every app. This means that a minimal Tauri app can be less than 600KB in size.

Learn more about creating optimized apps in the App Size concept.

Flexible Architecture

Since Tauri uses web technologies that means that virtually any frontend framework is compatible with Tauri. The Frontend Configuration guide contains common configurations for popular frontend frameworks and the Rendering concept discusses which rendering techniques work best with Tauri (such as SPAs and SSGs).

Bindings between JavaScript and Rust are available to developers using the invoke function in JavaScript and Swift and Kotlin bindings are available for Tauri Plugins.

TAO is responsible for Tauri window creation and WRY is responsible for web view rendering. These are libraries maintained by Tauri and can be consumed directly if deeper system integration is required outside of what Tauri exposes.

In addition, Tauri maintains a number of plugins to extend what core Tauri exposes. You can find those plugins alongside those provided by the community in the Features and Recipes section.