Local Apps – The simple solution to desktop web applications · GitHub
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samholmes/local-apps.md
Last active<br>July 11, 2026 17:32
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Local Apps – The simple solution to desktop web applications
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local-apps.md
Okay, so I have a bit of a story to tell.
Lately, I've been not as trusting of desktop application because of the lack of security sandboxing. So, I'm wanting to use web apps over desktop apps for the reason that I can get a pretty hardened sandbox environment (Firefox or Chrome are pretty hardened by companies with a lot of resources).
Today, I was looking for an email client. I wanted one that supports multiple inboxes unified into one (much like the gmail mobile client). However, I quickly discovered that all email clients are going to be desktop-based and potentially insecure. That's certainly not good considering that email is a pretty massive attack vector. Any web-based email client will most likely be dedicated to some specific email service (gmail, proton, etc). And, even if there was a web-client that supported any email provider in a unified way, there will still be a server involved because browsers do not support email protocols out of the box!
So it got me thinking about the reason why Electron/Tauri exists. On the surface, or initial understanding, one might think these technologies exists because web developers wanted a way to make thier web-apps "feel more like a desktop app". And sure, that's a big reason. But now, I discovered a really big reason why they exist: web developers want to build apps without building servers. So it got me thinking about a new approach to the category of technologies that is Electron/Tauri.
I'm going to introduce the idea hear as if it's a product announcement.
Introducing Local Apps, local-first web applications. Imagine being able to run web applications without the costly overhead of server infrastructure management and administration. No servers are needed! With Local Apps, you simply install the web app and run it in any browser of your choosing!
A local app is a web-app running on the local TLD. By default, home.local is installed to managed your local apps and configurations. From home.local you search and install local apps.
How does it work? When you install Local, it'll install a local web server written in Deno. This web server runs on your machine on port 443 with locally signed certificates. It manages a micro-service architecture where each application will install it's own sandboxed Deno web-server and is available under a second-level domain. By default home.local is installed. This is were you'll install other applications or manage permissions etc.
With this architecture, all web applications installed will have a dedicated backend running in a secure, sandboxed process using Deno. No servers. Your local machine is the server. In future versions, we'll make it easy for you to manage where...