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

def handle_info({:ex_tauri_event, "tray_menu_click", %{"id" => "quit"}}, state) do
  # Tray ids are only ever forwarded here; quitting is asked for explicitly.
  ExTauri.Desktop.quit()
  {:noreply, state}
end

Event names include "tray_menu_click", "menu_click" (application menu), "heartbeat_late" (the shell's heartbeat ran late — %{"late_ms" => n}, sent once when a stall starts, typically macOS App Nap throttling a hidden window; see keep_awake/1), and "error" (a command failed on the Rust side).

Staying responsive in the background

macOS App Nap slows the timers of an app whose window has been hidden for a while. Call keep_awake(true) while your app is doing work someone is waiting on, and keep_awake(false) when it is idle again — an app that holds it forever costs the user battery for nothing. The system can still sleep.

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.