Talk to the Tauri frontend from server-side Elixir — no LiveView required.

The LiveView bridge (ExTauri.Hook and friends) needs a connected browser socket. This module instead uses the desktop channel that ExTauri maintains between the Phoenix sidecar and the Rust frontend (the same local socket that carries the shutdown heartbeat), so it works from GenServers, background jobs, PubSub handlers — anywhere in your application.

Notifications from anywhere

# In a background job, no LiveView involved:
ExTauri.Desktop.notify("Sync complete", body: "128 records updated")

System tray

Define a tray icon and menu from Elixir. Clicks come back as events:

ExTauri.Desktop.set_tray(
  tooltip: "My App",
  items: [
    %{id: "open", label: "Open"},
    %{id: "sync", label: "Sync now"},
    %{id: "quit", label: "Quit"}
  ]
)

Receiving native events

Subscribe the calling process; events arrive as messages:

def init(state) do
  ExTauri.Desktop.subscribe()
  {:ok, state}
end

def handle_info({:ex_tauri_event, "tray_menu_click", %{"id" => "sync"}}, state) do
  # user clicked "Sync now" in the tray menu
  {:noreply, do_sync(state)}
end

Event names include "tray_menu_click", "menu_click" (application menu), and "error" (a command failed on the Rust side).

Availability

The channel exists once the Tauri frontend has connected (moments after the window appears). Before that — and always in plain mix phx.server runs outside Tauri — commands return {:error, :not_connected}. Callers should treat delivery as best-effort.