I’ve looked at things like tauri and the problem is always Windows. In general if you have a broadly distributed Windows app you must bundle or statically link everything. Even chained dependency installers don’t work since you have to keep them up to date, and fetching them online doesn’t work because it will fail in weird environments with filtered Internet access. All Windows installers must contain a microcosm of the entire universe.

I suppose if you could restrict to only Windows 11 it might help but there is still a ton of Windows 10 (and even 7!) out there. Does Windows 11 finally bundle Microsoft’s own standard C libraries?

I think the right path forward might be something like Sciter or Ultralight or even just a very stripped down version of Chromium. A web renderer is not that huge when it's stripped down and all the extensions and stuff a desktop app is not going to need are removed. You end up with something about as big as Qt or another cross-platform full stack UI toolkit.