Discord's New Rust App Uses a Fraction of the RAM - How to Slim Down the Current One

Discord is rebuilding its desktop app from scratch in Rust, and an early Windows 11 test build used about 290MB of RAM - the current app can climb as high as 4GB.

There's no release date yet, so the old app is the one on your PC for now.

Here's what's changing, how real that 290MB figure is, and five settings that cut Discord's memory use today.

What Discord Announced

On November 4, Discord co-founder and CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy posted on X that the whole app is moving to Rust: "Electron goes away, and so does React Native."

Electron is a kit that builds desktop apps out of a built-in web browser, which is why Discord, Slack and Teams carry a browser's memory load around with them. The new app uses GPUI, a native toolkit from the makers of the Zed code editor.

Vishnevskiy says the new app "looks and works identically" to the current one. In a side-by-side demo reported by Windows Central, it also opened visibly faster on a Windows 11 laptop.

Is 290MB the Real Number?

It comes from one Task Manager screenshot of an early build, called "Discord Phoenix", while logged into two accounts at once. In the same screenshot Chrome used about 1.57GB, Steam's web helper 856MB and Spotify 653MB.

The 4GB figure is the current app's worst case, and a Discord employee has said normal use is under 1GB. So everyday savings will be smaller than the headline suggests, but still big.

When Can You Get It?

There's no date and no beta sign-up. Vishnevskiy says Discord hopes to get it "into testing with users soon."

Only a Windows 11 build has been shown so far, and Mac and Linux versions haven't been confirmed. The phone apps are moving to the same Rust code too.

Cut Discord's RAM Use Today

1. Quit, don't just close. Closing the window only hides Discord in the system tray, where it keeps its memory - right-click the tray icon and choose Quit Discord.
2. Press Ctrl+R after a long session. It reloads the app and clears built-up memory without logging you out.
3. Stop the animations. In Settings > Accessibility, set Stickers to animate on interaction and turn off automatic GIF playback.
4. Turn off the in-game overlay. If you never use it, switch off Enable Overlay under Settings > Game Overlay.
5. Try hardware acceleration off. It's under Settings > Advanced and helps more with stutter than with memory - switch it back on if video gets choppy.

Discord is also testing an automatic fix of its own. Since late 2025, the Windows app can restart itself once a day if it passes 4GB while you're idle and not in a call.

The Lighter Option: Discord in Your Browser

If you already keep a browser open, Discord at discord.com/app shares that browser's memory instead of loading a second browser alongside it. It works in any modern browser, including Mozilla Firefox.

The trade-off is fewer features. There's no in-game overlay, and push-to-talk only works while the Discord tab is in front.

Is Discord the Real Problem?

Often it isn't alone. Teams, WhatsApp, Spotify and Steam are all built on web technology too, and together they add up fast on an 8GB PC.

Open Task Manager, sort by Memory and see who's on top. Microsoft PC Manager is a free Microsoft tool that shows the same thing in plainer terms and can free up memory in one click.

Windows itself is slimming down as well - see what Microsoft's RAM cuts mean for your 8GB PC.

Quick questions