App Size

While Tauri by default provides very small binaries it doesn’t hurt to push the limits a bit, so here are some tips and tricks for reaching optimal results.

Cargo Configuration

One of the simplest frontend agnostic size improvements you can do to your project is adding a Cargo profile to it.

Dependent on whether you use the stable or nightly Rust toolchain the options available to you differ a bit. It’s recommended you stick to the stable toolchain unless you’re an advanced user.

Stable

src-tauri/Cargo.toml

[profile.dev]
incremental = true # Compile your binary in smaller steps.

[profile.release]
codegen-units = 1 # Allows LLVM to perform better optimization.
lto = true # Enables link-time-optimizations.
opt-level = "s" # Prioritizes small binary size. Use `3` if you prefer speed.
panic = "abort" # Higher performance by disabling panic handlers.
strip = true # Ensures debug symbols are removed.

Nightly

src-tauri/Cargo.toml

[profile.dev]
incremental = true # Compile your binary in smaller steps.
rustflags = ["-Zthreads=8"] # Better compile performance.

[profile.release]
codegen-units = 1 # Allows LLVM to perform better optimization.
lto = true # Enables link-time-optimizations.
opt-level = "s" # Prioritizes small binary size. Use `3` if you prefer speed.
panic = "abort" # Higher performance by disabling panic handlers.
strip = true # Ensures debug symbols are removed.
trim-paths = "all" # Removes potentially privileged information from your binaries.
rustflags = ["-Cdebuginfo=0", "-Zthreads=8"] # Better compile performance.

References

Note

This is not a complete reference over all available options, merely the ones that we’d like to draw extra attention to.

• incremental: Compile your binary in smaller steps.
• codegen-units: Speeds up compile times at the cost of compile time optimizations.
• lto: Enables link time optimizations.
• opt-level: Determines the focus of the compiler. Use 3 to optimize performance, z to optimize for size, and s for something in-between.
• panic: Reduce size by removing panic unwinding.
• strip: Strip either symbols or debuginfo from a binary.
• rpath: Assists in finding the dynamic libraries the binary requires by hard coding information into the binary.
• trim-paths: Removes potentially privileged information from binaries.
• rustflags: Sets Rust compiler flags on a profile by profile basis.
  • -Cdebuginfo=0: Whether debuginfo symbols should be included in the build.
  • -Zthreads=8: Increases the number of threads used during compilation.