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bunmaska vs Electrobun
bunmaska and Electrobun are the two projects building desktop apps on Bun and the system's WebView instead of a bundled Chromium. They share a thesis and differ on almost everything above it. Here's the honest comparison.
What they share
Bun as the runtime, the operating system's own WebView as the renderer, and a hard line against shipping Chromium. Both produce small apps for the same structural reason.
Where they differ
| Electrobun | bunmaska | |
|---|---|---|
| API | Its own RPC-style API | Drop-in Electron (app, BrowserWindow, ipcMain, ...) |
| Native code | A compiled Zig/Bun core + native wrapper | Pure bun:ffi, zero compiled native code |
| Native modules | Via the runtime | A .ts file that dlopens the OS - no node-gyp |
| Engine | System WebView | System WebKit, or pin an exact build via the engine store |
| Updates | bsdiff delta updates | Full-download auto-updater (deltas planned) |
| Maturity | v1 stable | Alpha |
Which should you use?
If you want a mature, stable Bun desktop framework today and are happy learning its API, Electrobun is further along - it hit v1 while bunmaska is still alpha. If you're migrating an existing Electron app (or you want to keep the Electron mental model), want native modules with no build step, or need to pin an exact WebKit version, bunmaska is built for exactly that. Both refuse to ship Chromium; pick the one whose API and maturity match where you are.