Tauri Practical Tips: Dynamic Window Detection and Error Handling

Dynamic Window Detection

When creating dynamic windows, you need to check if the window already exists. The reason is that webview windows use a label (I’m not familiar with webview naming conventions, theoretically this should be called an id, but at least in Tauri’s API it’s called a label) as the window’s unique ID. Without this check, an error will definitely occur when a window with the same name already exists:

called `Result::unwrap()` on an `Err` value: WebviewLabelAlreadyExists("setting")
note: run with `RUST_BACKTRACE=1` environment variable to display a backtrace

Hiding the Menu Bar

Some interfaces need to hide the menu bar, but Tauri only has the decorations = false solution. This solution will hide both the window decorations (including title, maximize/minimize windows) and the menu bar. This operation will also cause the window to become immovable.

My solution is still to use decorations = false, and then simulate the title and close window, maximize/minimize windows in the interface.

<span data-tauri-drag-region className="dark:text-zinc-200 font-medium text-center">I am the window title</span>

By adding data-tauri-drag-region to solve the problem of the window being immovable. However, if you add data-tauri-drag-region to the top-level structure, it might be ineffective. The specific reason I guess should be some event conflicts.

At least for simulating window maximize, minimize, and close operations, the following API can be used:

	const currentWindow = WebviewWindow.getCurrent();
	await currentWindow.close(); // Close
	await currentWindow.minimize(); // Minimize
	await currentWindow.hide(); // Hide
	await currentWindow.maximize(); // Maximize

Differences Across Three Platforms

Cross-platform development looks promising, with multiple platforms sharing one codebase, allowing one programmer to do the work of three. But actually, it depends on how closely your application is tied to the platform. For example, if you’re making a WeChat or Feishu application, using a cross-platform framework would result in very high code reuse.

But if you’re making something like a screenshot application or screen recording software, it’s not necessarily the case. For example, macOS requires permission requests in this area, and for Linux, are you going to use X server or Wayland? Or do you need to be compatible with both? Since the interfaces of the three platforms must be different, you inevitably need to write three sets of code.

There are also window differences. Although Tauri uses frontend for the interface, the Window itself uses system UI by default. For example, on Linux, GTK is used. Since the UI of the three platforms is not consistent, by default, the implemented application will still have differences.

Other Thoughts Since I happen to know frontend development, using Tauri to develop GUI is really convenient. The development experience with Tauri completely outperforms all native frameworks. But Tauri is also slow, very slow, with a lagging feeling where the response can’t keep up with operations.

If you don’t know frontend, you can actually use Dioxus. Like Tauri, Dioxus also uses webview to render the user interface. The difference is that Dioxus implements its own DSL macro (similar to JSX’s RSX syntax) for writing frontend, which is much more friendly for users who only know Rust. However, the freedom is definitely not as good as Tauri’s. Tauri can choose any UI library, while Dioxus can only do it on its own.