Building a Lightweight Electron Application with SvelteKit and GraphQL

In the realm of desktop app development, achieving high performance without excessive resource consumption is a common challenge. Recently, I designed an Electron-based application that remarkably maintains low RAM usage—avoiding the typical gigabyte-scale footprints often associated with Electron apps. Here’s how I did it, and how you can optimize your own projects.

Understanding the Performance Bottleneck

Many Electron applications—such as popular messaging clients—tend to lag due to excessive repaints triggered throughout the app’s interface. These frequent redraws often cause sluggish performance and high memory usage, primarily because of the way Chromium handles rendering.

Strategies for Optimization

To enhance efficiency, I focused on reducing unnecessary repaints. Key techniques included:

• Limiting repaints by updating only properties like CSS transform and opacity during animations.
• Enabling background throttling to pause background processes when not in focus.
• Making complex visual effects, such as 3D animations and glow effects, cost-effective by leveraging GPU-accelerated CSS properties, which are close to zero performance cost.

Choice of Framework

For building the UI, I selected SvelteKit, due to its lightweight and performant nature. Comparing this to Electron apps built with React—such as Discord, which can consume around 800MB of RAM just for JavaScript execution—I aimed for a leaner architecture.

Technology Stack

The core of the application is built with:

• TypeScript: Enhanced with a rigorous ESLint configuration for code quality.
• GraphQL: Powered by urql and gql.tada, enabling offline data caching, entity normalization, and seamless offline usability.
• UI Components: Crafted with shadcn/svelte for a modern interface.

Performance Architecture

All heavy processing is handled within Electron’s dedicated utilityProcess, a specialized Node.js worker that isolates resource-intensive tasks. Communication is managed via advanced IPC mechanisms, ensuring smooth data flow between processes.

Frontiers of Fancy Features

Beyond basic functionality, the app includes sophisticated features such as:

• A custom subtitle rendering library
• OpenGL shader-based video processing to reduce compression artifacts
• An innovative video player with advanced effects

Conclusion

By combining strategic performance practices, an efficient framework, and thoughtful architecture, it’s entirely possible to develop Electron applications that are both powerful and resource-friendly. If you’re looking to build a responsive desktop application without burdening users’ systems, consider these