Pake: Tiny Desktop Apps From Any Website

Why this is useful

Pake is a free open-source wrapper that turns a website into a lightweight desktop app using Tauri instead of shipping a full Electron-style browser runtime. The real value is not the viral claim that every app is identical at 65x smaller; the value is that simple web tools can become small native shells for macOS, Windows, and Linux with one command.

Best fit

Use Pake for web apps you already trust in the browser: AI chat tools, docs dashboards, internal admin panels, lightweight media tools, and personal productivity pages. It is strongest when you want a separate desktop window, quick launch, small installers, and lower disk overhead.

Quick start

pnpm install -g pake-cli
pake https://github.com --name GitHub
pake https://weekly.tw93.fun --name Weekly --width 1200 --height 800 --hide-title-bar

Ready-made builds

The current GitHub release includes prebuilt packages for ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek, Excalidraw, YouTube, YouTube Music, Twitter, WeChat, WeRead, and more. Example release sizes from V3.12.0: ChatGPT_x64.msi is about 3.7 MB, ChatGPT.dmg is about 9.9 MB, and ChatGPT_x86_64.deb is about 4.7 MB. Linux AppImage builds are much larger, around 79 MB, so do not repeat the under-10-MB claim blindly across every platform.

Reality check

• Pake is free and GPL-3.0 licensed, with a Pake Output Exception for apps you build.
• The repo had about 56.8k GitHub stars and 11.2k forks at verification time on 2026-06-23.
• Latest stable GitHub release checked: V3.12.0, published 2026-06-21, with 60 release assets.
• The repo had a newer main-branch commit on 2026-06-22 tagged by message as release 3.12.1, but the latest GitHub release endpoint still returned V3.12.0.

Caveats before replacing your apps

Pake apps use the system WebView via Tauri. That is why installers can be small, but it also means behavior can vary by operating system and WebView version. Some sites may block embedded WebViews, some login flows may behave differently, and wrappers do not automatically reproduce every feature of an official desktop app such as deep OS integrations, notifications, tray behavior, file handlers, or enterprise device controls.

Verdict

Free loot. Strong for power users and creators who keep many web apps open, but sell it as a lean desktop wrapper builder, not as a guaranteed drop-in replacement for Slack, Discord, Notion, or ChatGPT on every machine.