Excalidraw Desktop

An unofficial desktop version of Excalidraw, built with Tauri v2. This project wraps the full Excalidraw web application in a native desktop shell, giving you the same drawing experience without needing a browser.

About

Excalidraw is an open-source virtual whiteboard with a hand-drawn feel. This desktop port tracks the upstream repository closely and adds a minimal Tauri v2 shell on top, keeping changes to the original codebase as small as possible.

This project is not affiliated with the Excalidraw team. It is an independent effort to bring Excalidraw to the desktop.

Download

Head to the Releases page and download the latest build for your platform:

Platform	Format
Windows	.msi, .exe
macOS (Intel)	.dmg
macOS (Apple Silicon)	.dmg
Linux	.deb, .rpm, .AppImage

Building from source

Prerequisites

• Node.js (LTS)
• Yarn (corepack enable)
• Rust (stable)
• System dependencies for your platform (see Tauri prerequisites)

Development

# Install dependencies
yarn install

# Run in development mode (hot-reload)
yarn tauri dev

Production build

yarn tauri build

Build artifacts will be in src-tauri/target/release/bundle/.

Updating from upstream

This repo tracks excalidraw/excalidraw via a git remote:

git fetch upstream
git merge upstream/master

The only modified upstream file is excalidraw-app/vite.config.mts (minor Tauri integration tweaks). Everything else (src-tauri/, .gitignore additions, package.json devDependency) is additive and won't conflict.

Project structure

.
├── excalidraw-app/       # Excalidraw web app (from upstream)
├── packages/             # Excalidraw core packages (from upstream)
├── src-tauri/            # Tauri v2 desktop shell (our addition)
│   ├── tauri.conf.json   # Tauri configuration
│   ├── Cargo.toml        # Rust dependencies
│   ├── src/              # Rust entry points
│   ├── icons/            # App icons (generated from Excalidraw logo)
│   └── capabilities/     # Tauri v2 permissions
└── ...                   # Other upstream excalidraw files

Acknowledgments

• Excalidraw - the original open-source whiteboard
• Tauri - the framework powering the desktop shell

Desktop port by Oliver Seifert

License

This project is open-source and available under the same license as the original Excalidraw project (MIT).