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https://github.com/pojala/electrino is electron alternative that uses the system's own web browser engine.

I had the same idea: a lightweight variant of Electron, that just uses WKWebView for the GUI and JavaScriptCore for the core functionality, passing messages between them (serializing via JSON).

I have a proof of concept already, but it's not cross-platform so that's a major downside, and I don't think many people need the combination of (1) Mac-only, (2) lightweight, (3) using JS for the core logic, (4) using web views for the GUI. I just don't think there's a market for that.

Your idea is not bad. In fact it has been done multiple times already.

https://github.com/zserge/webview

https://github.com/Boscop/web-view

and so on

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