Native for real
Your own kernel and the system WebView. No bundled Chromium.
Owear.
Build your desktop apps with your own tools — and with everything you want.
$ npm i -g @owear/cli
Available on Linux and Windows
Small binaries
The base kernel is around 2 MB. Less weight, faster startup.
TypeScript end to end
A typed SDK in the main process and in the renderer.
Installers and updates
Real installers and auto-update with delta, signing and rollback.
Native code when you need it
Add C++ modules to your app and call them from TypeScript.
Open source
Apache-2.0, developed in the open on GitHub.
From zero to app
Four commands, that's it.
ow create scaffolds a project with the UI ready, ow dev brings up the kernel + Vite with hot-reload, and ow build produces your binary, your installer or your update channel.
- Hot-reload for the renderer and the main process
- Native modules are discovered on startup
- The renderer is standard web: use your own stack
# create + run $ ow create my-app ✓ project created in ./my-app $ cd my-app && ow dev kernel owear 0.1.4 (linux/x64) vite ready in 320 ms window http://localhost:5173 # package $ ow build app release/my-app 1.9 MB ✓ done
Included
Desktop is hard. It's already done.
Owear takes care of the boring parts so you can focus on your app.
The system's own interface
Native windows, menus, tray, dialogs and notifications. Control the whole app lifecycle from the main process.
Automatic updates
Publish a signed channel and your app updates itself: it downloads only what changed and rolls back if something breaks.
Real installers
One installer binary with shortcuts, icon and its own uninstaller. No extra toolchains or dependencies.
Your native code, inside
When JavaScript isn't enough, add C++ to your app (.owm) and call it from the renderer like any other function.
No lock-in
Use the tools you already know.
The renderer is standard web: bring your own stack and build.
Vite React Vue Svelte Solid Astro Preact TypeScript Tailwind CSS esbuild
Benchmarks
Measured, not promised.
The same app (same HTML/JS) running on each framework, on Linux with Xvfb and software rendering: warmup + 3 interleaved runs, startup by marker (5 ms) and memory in PSS (proportional, so shared pages aren't counted twice).
70%
Owear’s net score vs Electron
Geometric mean across 11 zones. Baseline Electron = 100%; lower is better.
| Owear | Electron | Tauri | Neutralino | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Startup (ms) | 1,438 | 1,028 | 1,001 | 958 |
| Idle RAM (MB, PSS) | 105 | 248 | 120 | 129 |
| Peak RAM (MB, PSS) | 334 | 408 | 255 | 308 |
| Size (MB) | 1.8 | 262 | 11.6 | 3.0 |
| Sequential IPC (ops/s) | 1,496 | 3,192 | 1,127 | 23 |
| Concurrent IPC (ops/s) | 4,211 | 10,449 | 2,886 | 876 |
| Payload 1 MB (ms) | 28 | 11.5 | 27 | 111 |
| File 5 MB (MB/s) | 83 | 119 | 93 | 116 |
| Download 5 MB (ms) | 79 | 30 | 68 | 284 |
| Native→render events (ev/s) | 250,000 | 34,990 | 1,371 | 10,438 |
| JS loop 20M (ms) | 27 | 32 | 24 | 24 |
Medians over 3 runs (plus a discarded warmup). Electron bundles Chromium; Owear/Tauri/Neutralino use the system WebView. Neutralino measures its IPC through its own extension. Methodology and caveats: benchmarks/README.md.
Get started
Your first app in a minute.
01
Install the CLI
$ npm i -g @owear/cli 02
Create a project
$ ow create my-app 03
Develop
$ cd my-app && ow dev 04
Build
$ ow build app Requires: Node ≥ 20 and, on Linux, the WebKitGTK toolchain (see the documentation).
Build native desktop.
Open source, Apache-2.0. Get started in a minute.