That is not why people use Electron. The goal is not and never was to just be a "UI toolkit" and "adopting UI patterns from their host OS".

Chromium has so much stuff packed into it, its insane. All that utility comes with Electron. And that's a good thing.

If you ever worked with video, for example, you know that having the full power of a modern browser in a desktop app is a game changer. Video playback (not to mention transcoding, which is also possible with modern web and webcodecs) is a complex beast, implementing that yourself is massive undertaking, not to mention in a desktop app that is supposed to work on win/mac/lin. I've built apps with Electron in tens of hours that would otherwise take me tens of days or more (and thats with AI because I'm not a video expert).

How is it a poor choice of words? It might not be "native" UI, but they never claimed as such.

I've always felt that native UI on Linux always looks incredibly ugly and I'd much rather use a nicely styled HTML+CSS layout instead.

In my experience, Electron mostly gets flak for being bloated and slow, it not being native is sometimes a secondary point people add on top.

I've always wanted to build a direct-browser integration that could use HTML+CSS for the layout, but avoids needing a JS runtime. Idk how lightweight servo is but one day I hope I will see my idea come to light

Looking native has long left the station as an objection about a UI.

Like 25 years ago. Nobody gives a damn since Microsoft stopped giving a damn.

Every time I use Zed across Linux, macOS and Windows , I'm amazed stable and performant it's GPUI framework is. As a user, I'm very happy with it; of course some basic features like accessibility is missing but I'm sure it will be implemented soon.

As a developer, I'm not sure what's the barrier for entry is apart from Rust then again it's the USP as well.

> They consistently miss the mark in adopting UI patterns from their host OS.

What you suggest is a disadvantage is one of the key advantages of Electron to me. I precisely do not want my things to look different on different OS. I don't have the resources to test my apps on all devices, and knowing that whatever I test on one system looks the same on another is A+.

At this point the only OS with a consistent look and feel at all is Mac. For the other OSes, I don't even know what a "native" look and feel would be. And most apps have their own branding and style they want to tout anyway. So I don't think "apps should look native" is the leading reason to not use Electron.

For me, the leading reason to use Electron is the fact that I already have a browser running so why not just use that to render your webpage... Make it a PWA if you want it in its own window.

Who cares if it looks native?

Native UIs change all the time too and not always for the better.

> look native to the OS

Is that a problem? A button with a legible label is a button. The host OS doesn't have to look exactly like the applications it runs.

Yeah, it is mostly laziness and cost cutting at the expense of users.

Nowadays there isn't even an excuse anymore, just vibe code it away in native frameworks.

Tauri is getting traction in the meantime.

A non-native UI has some issues, but also one clear advantage - it is easier to make a cross-system app with the same looks.

> Web tech is just web tech. Yes it will allow you to render a button, but even unstyled, the button won't necessarily look native to the OS, and will vary between browsers.

The irritating, and unnecessary, pedantry.

This. It's nuts how the whole industry accepts that typesetting engine from 80s with bunch of hacks on top is currently dominating cross-platform UI development.

Since when did anyone ever complain that youtube, google maps, roblox, or any other web sites didn't have native buttons and UI patterns?

Are you implying that the Windows, Mac, and Linux native desktop user interfaces don't all totally suck??! Or that there wasn't a huge celebration when Alan Dye finally left Apple for Meta? Or that users are clamoring for Jony Ive's infamous shallow superficial visual elegance over affordance and discoverability and usability?

Is it just too confusing for people to use youtube because the buttons don't look and feel exactly like native Mac buttons on the Mac and native Windows buttons on the Windows and whatever the kids are using on Linux desktops these days, therefore nobody uses youtube, and that it will only ever get popular if it just had a native look and feel?

> UI patterns from their host OS

I genuinely wonder who ever want that, and what apps those people use on their PC. Can you imagine, for example, Blender Foundation says that their next goal is to make Blender's UI look more like the host OS?

None of that changes whether it's a UI toolkit, which it surely is.