Electron, It's done bro

Description and use

The author swapped heavy Electron apps for Sonora, a native Rust/GPUI music player that supports Spotify Connect and custom themes, solving the memory issue on a MacBook Air M3.

Problem

The author’s MacBook Air M3 with 8 GB RAM quickly ran out of memory when running Electron‑based apps like VS Code and Spotify, prompting a search for a lightweight native music player that supports Spotify Connect and custom themes.

Outcome

Sonora provided a lightweight, native music player that supports Spotify Connect, custom themes, and lyrics, resolving the author’s memory‑usage problem on a MacBook Air M3.

Workflow

• 1. Identified memory issue with Electron apps on MacBook Air M3.
• 2. Replaced VS Code with Zed and explored native music players (Spotube, Spicetify).
• 3. Discovered Sonora on GitHub and examined its architecture.
• 4. Reviewed PR #895 for Spotify Connect support.
• 5. Built Sonora from source using cargo run --release or downloaded GitHub Actions artifact.
• 6. Verified Spotify Connect functionality and custom theme support.

Evidence

I own a base Macbook Air M3 with a crisp 8 gigs of RAM which literally burns away in a matter of seconds when I fire up my development environment with VS Code, Spotify and just a few browser tabs.

Source

I wanted to be able to use my custom themes and lyrics on a native app, but none of the native apps supported this.

Source

Sonora is a free, open‑source native music player built by @sonorahq using Rust and GPUI.

Source

PR #895: feat(music): show sonora as a spotify connect device opened by contributor Tu2525.

Source

Instead of waiting weeks for a new release, open source allows you to either grab the automated build artifact from GitHub Actions or simply clone the repo and run cargo run --release to enjoy the feature today.

Source