Not a fan of Electron or native-ified apps in general but I usually have a very easy decision matrix:
If it's one of my main productivity drivers (IDE, Browser, E-Mail, Messenger, Note-taking app, whatever) it can be massive and I am willing to update it constantly.
If it's a tiny tool that sometimes offers one functionality and otherwise sits in the tray: No, I don't want it to gobble up 200MB of RAM if you can quite literally draw the window and the 5 checkboxes and 3 buttons with 30 lines of WINAPI code. I might have 10 of these running, a browser-based UI does not make sense for this, yet people keep doing it. Electron is good at UIs, if I only open the UI once per month (but the app is running 24/7) it should optimize for resource usage, not developer happiness.
Some things are in between, even for me. Music player: I prefer foobar2000 or the likes, no images, just a list of songs I can doubleclick. Not a web app. A text editor that does not render mark down, is not an IDE, etc.pp. Not a web app. But for some people these can be really feature rich, not for me.
Generally agree. Tiny utilities should be, well, tiny.
Will add that where possible, I’ll use the PWA version instead of the Electron version now that Safari on macOS can install PWAs that launch independently from the browser itself (unlike Chrome and its numerous cousins which require the full browser to be open). This sidesteps some of the native access concerns that come with Electron versions and is easier on the battery than the Electron version or a Chrome tab.
If it's one of my main productivity drivers (IDE, Browser, E-Mail, Messenger, Note-taking app, whatever) it can be massive and I am willing to update it constantly.
If it's a tiny tool that sometimes offers one functionality and otherwise sits in the tray: No, I don't want it to gobble up 200MB of RAM if you can quite literally draw the window and the 5 checkboxes and 3 buttons with 30 lines of WINAPI code. I might have 10 of these running, a browser-based UI does not make sense for this, yet people keep doing it. Electron is good at UIs, if I only open the UI once per month (but the app is running 24/7) it should optimize for resource usage, not developer happiness.
Some things are in between, even for me. Music player: I prefer foobar2000 or the likes, no images, just a list of songs I can doubleclick. Not a web app. A text editor that does not render mark down, is not an IDE, etc.pp. Not a web app. But for some people these can be really feature rich, not for me.