How SwitchHosts 5.0 Shrank from 80 MB to 2 MB with an AI‑Driven Tauri Migration
SwitchHosts 5.0 replaces its bulky Electron base with Tauri, cutting the installer from 80 MB to about 2 MB, using Claude and GPT to plan and execute the migration, while adding auto‑updates, broader platform support, and upgraded toolchains.
SwitchHosts is a hosts‑management tool popular among PIG micro‑service users; the author has long recommended it for mapping database, Redis, and Nacos IPs to local hosts files.
The original Electron‑based version bundled a full Chromium browser, resulting in installation packages of 70–80 MB despite the core functionality being limited to reading and writing a text file.
In contrast, the author previously suggested Hostly, a Tauri v2 + Rust alternative that weighs about 1 MB.
5.0 Release: From 80 MB to 2 MB
After a five‑year gap since the last major release, SwitchHosts 5.0 arrives with the core change of swapping Electron for Tauri 2. The Windows installer is now only 2.7 MB, smaller than a typical smartphone photo.
Migration Process: AI‑Powered
The maintainer evaluated three options—Tauri, Wails, and Electrobun—and chose Tauri because SwitchHosts’s functionality is simple and the risk of hitting Tauri‑specific pitfalls is low.
The actual migration was almost entirely performed by AI (Claude Opus 4.6/4.7 and GPT‑5.5). First, the UI framework was switched from Chakra to Mantine. Then AI generated a step‑by‑step migration plan in Markdown, which the maintainer followed. The author notes that AI’s limited context window required writing the plan down to avoid forgetting earlier steps.
After a few intermittent days of work, the core migration succeeded.
Other Improvements
Auto‑update rebuilt with Tauri updater, supporting proxy requests for Chinese users.
Expanded platform coverage: macOS Intel, Apple Silicon, universal builds; Windows x64, x86, and ARM64.
CI pipeline reconstructed to run full tests before release, with macOS signature verification.
Toolchain upgraded to Vite 8, TypeScript 6, and Mantine 9.
Conclusion
The author verified that users can upgrade directly from SwitchHosts 3.x to 5.0 and that data structures remain compatible.
Download links:
SwitchHosts 5.0: https://github.com/oldj/SwitchHosts/releases
Hostly: https://github.com/zengyufei/Hostly/releases
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