Hotwire Desktop Idea

Pin: Revisit this idea later.

Concept

A Hotwire Native equivalent for desktop (macOS, Windows, Linux) built on Tauri. Would embed the OS-native WebView in a lightweight native shell, intercept Turbo Drive navigation, and manage native window chrome — the same pattern Hotwire Native uses for mobile.

Why It Matters

The pitch: “Build your app in Rails, ship to iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, and Linux from one codebase.” That’s a compelling counter to Flutter, React Native, and Electron — especially because the Rails app is also the backend.

Why It Doesn’t Exist

37signals built Hotwire Native because they needed App Store distribution. Desktop users just use the browser. No one with the resources and motivation has built the desktop equivalent.

Why Tauri

Tauri uses the OS-native WebView (WKWebView/WebView2/WebKitGTK) — same approach as Hotwire Native on mobile. Install size: ~5–10MB vs Electron’s ~150–200MB.

Other Rust desktop frameworks (Iced, Zed’s GPUI, gtk-rs, Slint) build their own rendering pipelines with no WebView — nothing for Hotwire to hook into.

Wry is the Rust library underneath Tauri that manages WebView embedding. A leaner alternative to building on full Tauri, but you’d reimplement a lot of platform scaffolding.

The Hard Problem

Desktop navigation is messier than mobile. Mobile has clear conventions (push/pop stacks, modals, tab bars). Desktop has multiple windows, tabs, menu bars, keyboard shortcuts, split views. That’s where most of the design work would live.

For FlowDice

Not needed — PWA covers desktop completely for a dice roller. But as a community project for the Rails ecosystem, it could be a force multiplier.

Next Steps

• Raise in the Hotwire Discussion forum to gauge interest
• Assess feasibility of Tauri + Hotwire navigation bridge
• Prototype with a simple Rails app

See also: Hotwire Native