I built the cross-platform Nostr desktop client I always wanted

Why I spent a year building Vega — a Tauri-based Nostr client with an embedded relay, Lightning zaps, and first-class long-form writing.

Most Nostr clients live in the browser or on your phone. That's fine for scrolling, but I kept hitting the same walls: I wanted a fast native app on my desktop, I wanted my notes to survive even if every relay I used disappeared, and I wanted to write — actual long-form articles, not just 280-character hot takes.

So I built is a simple, open protocol for censorship-resistant social networking. Your identity is a keypair, not an account on someone's server. Your posts ("notes") are signed events published to relays — dumb, interchangeable servers anyone can run. No company owns the network, and clients are interchangeable too: log into any of them with the same key, and your identity, follows, and posts come with you.

That last part matters for what follows. When there's no platform lock-in, clients compete purely on quality. I thought the desktop deserved a serious contender.

Why a desktop app in 2026?

Fair question. The honest answer: because it's where I live. I write, I code, I listen to podcasts — all on a desktop with a real keyboard. And desktop apps can do things browser tabs can't:

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  Run background services. Vega embeds an actual Nostr relay ( with a React 19 + TypeScript frontend. The Rust backend handles the native side: keychain access, SQLite, the embedded relay process, system tray, auto-updates.
  
  
  

  I picked Tauri over Electron for the classic reasons, and they held up in practice. The installers are 6–11 MB depending on platform — not 150 MB. Memory usage is a fraction of an Electron equivalent because it uses the OS webview instead of bundling Chromium. And having Rust on the backend meant the security-sensitive parts (key storage, signing) live outside JavaScript entirely.

  
  
  

  The frontend talks Nostr through , written in Go, supporting 19 NIPs including full-text search and NIP-42 auth. Running your own relay teaches you a lot about the protocol's edge cases. That's probably a post of its own.

  
  
  

  
  
  
  Lightning everywhere
  

  
  
  

  Nostr has native payments via Bitcoin's Lightning Network — "zaps" — and this is where it stops feeling like a Twitter clone and starts feeling like something new.

  
  
  

  Vega integrates Lightning at several levels:

  
  
  
  
  
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    Zaps with configurable presets, via Nostr Wallet Connect (NIP-47), with a guided setup wizard for Alby Hub, Mutiny, and Phoenix.
  
  
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    A built-in V4V podcast player that streams sats to podcast creators in real time while you listen, with budgets and per-episode caps. Value-for-value podcasting is criminally underrated, and I wanted it as a first-class citizen, not a plugin.
  
  
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    Zap history so you can actually see where your sats went.
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  Long-form writing as a first-class citizen
  

  
  
  

  Most clients treat long-form content (NIP-23 articles) as an afterthought. Vega ships a full Markdown article editor with syntax highlighting, multi-draft management, and dedicated article feeds for reading. If Nostr is going to be a home for writers — and I think it can be a serious blogging platform, since your articles are portable, signed, and censorship-resistant — the tooling has to be there.

  
  
  

  
  
  
  The small things that add up
  

  
  
  

  A grab bag of details I'm proud of: eight themes (including Catppuccin Mocha and Gruvbox, because of course), the Atkinson Hyperlegible font option and WCAG AA contrast for accessibility, advanced search with modifiers like by:author and since:2026-01-01, script-based feed filtering (Latin/CJK/Cyrillic/Arabic), NIP-46 remote signer support so your key never has to touch the app at all, and encrypted DMs using NIP-17 gift wrap.

  
  
  

  None of these is a headline feature. Together they're the difference between a demo and a daily driver.

  
  
  

  
  
  
  About the name
  

  
  
  

  Vega is named after
  



• 💻 Source: github.com/hoornet/vega
  

If you try it, I'd love to hear what breaks or what's missing — issues and PRs are very welcome. And if you're already on Nostr, come say hi over there.

This is the first post about the things I've been building — there's more coming (an AI-readable docs platform, a Home Assistant memory layer, a distraction-free Markdown editor…). Follow along if indie cross-platform apps are your thing.

Thanks for reading! Questions about Tauri, embedding a relay, or Nostr development in general — fire away in the comments.