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Turn any webpage into an inspectable Electrobun desktop app with one command.

97 starsTypeScript

Appbun – Turn any URL into desktop app with one command Electrobun+bun

by bigmacfive·Mar 8, 2026·1 point·1 comment
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AI Analysis

●●SolidShip ItSolve My Problem

Pake alternative in TypeScript: readable output, not hidden Rust binary, but Windows/Linux still roadmap.

Strengths
  • •Icon detection includes validation logic to reject broken responses (HTML instead of actual images).
  • •Generated projects are inspectable and editable—100 lines of TypeScript vs. opaque Rust binary.
  • •macOS DMG workflow already works; multi-platform foundation in place.
Weaknesses
  • •Directly competes with Pake—loses on maturity, multi-OS support, and ecosystem momentum.
  • •Early-stage: Windows and Linux packaging not shipped, limiting immediate utility for non-macOS users.
Target Audience

Developers wrapping web apps as desktop tools, anyone who knows TypeScript but not Rust

Similar To

Pake · Tauri · Electron

Post Description

Hi HN. I made this.

I wanted something like Pake, but Pake's output is a binary — when you want to change anything you have to dig into Rust. I don't know Rust. So I built appbun, which wraps a URL in an Electrobun project instead. The output is ~10 TypeScript files, nothing hidden.

The annoying part was icons. Sites don't agree on where to put them — manifest, apple-touch-icon, favicon.ico, linked SVG. And a lot of sites return an HTML page for /favicon.ico with status 200, which makes naive fetching just... silently wrong. Ended up writing a scoring/validation pass that tries candidates in order until something real comes back.

macOS DMG works today. Windows/Linux packaging is on the roadmap, the project builds there already.

Curious if anyone's hit sites where the icon logic picks the wrong thing.

https://github.com/bigmacfive/appbun

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