I rewrote my Mac Electron app in Rust
A year ago, my co-founder launched Desktop Docs here on HN. It's a Mac app we built with Electron that uses CLIP embeddings to search photos and videos locally with natural language. We got positive feedback from HN and our first paying customers, but the app was almost 1GB and clunky to use. TLDR; rebuilding in Rust was the right move. So we rewrote the app with Rust and Tauri and here are the results: - App size is 83% smaller: 1GB → 172MB - DMG Installer is 70% smaller: 232MB → 69.5MB - Indexing files is faster: A 38-minute video now indexes in ~3 minutes instead of 10-14 minutes -…
I rewrote my Mac Electron app in Rust launched on May 28, 2025 with 597 votes, #19 of 7,905 launches that month and more than 99% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 1 year on.
In plain words
Desktop Docs is a Mac application that searches through photos and videos stored locally using natural language queries powered by CLIP embeddings. The app was rebuilt from Electron to Rust and Tauri, resulting in significant performance improvements: the application size shrunk from 1GB to 172MB, indexing speed increased dramatically (a 38-minute video now indexes in three minutes instead of ten to fourteen), and overall stability improved. It is designed for Mac users who want to organize and find visual media on their computer without uploading files to the cloud.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
Cosmos helps video companies find the right past work faster, so sales teams can use finished projects to win more deals.
In the maker’s words, at launch
A year ago, my co-founder launched Desktop Docs here on HN. It's a Mac app we built with Electron that uses CLIP embeddings to search photos and videos locally with natural language. We got positive feedback from HN and our first paying customers, but the app was almost 1GB and clunky to use. TLDR; rebuilding in Rust…
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