Outline the plan

desktop/src/main.ts

@@ -212,6 +212,25 @@ const setupTrayItem = (mainWindow: BrowserWindow) => {
     tray.setContextMenu(createTrayContextMenu(mainWindow));
 };
 
+/**
+ * Register a protocol handler that we use for streaming large files between the
+ * main process (node) and the renderer process (browser) layer.
+ *
+ * [Note: IPC streams]
+ *
+ * When running without node integration, there is no direct way to pass streams
+ * across IPC. And passing the entire contents of the file is not feasible for
+ * large video files because of the memory pressure the copying would entail.
+ *
+ * As an alternative, we register a custom protocol handler that can provided a
+ * bi-directional stream. The renderer can stream data to the node side by
+ * streaming the request. The node side can stream to the renderer side by
+ * streaming the response.
+ *
+ * See also: [Note: Transferring large amount of data over IPC]
+ */
+const registerStreamProtocol = () => {};
+
 /**
  * Older versions of our app used to maintain a cache dir using the main
  * process. This has been deprecated in favor of using a normal web cache.
@@ -278,6 +297,7 @@ const main = () => {
         handleDownloads(mainWindow);
         handleExternalLinks(mainWindow);
         addAllowOriginHeader(mainWindow);
+        registerStreamProtocol();
 
         try {
             deleteLegacyDiskCacheDirIfExists();

desktop/src/preload.ts

@@ -300,7 +300,8 @@ const getDirFiles = (dirPath: string): Promise<ElectronFile[]> =>
 //   https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/api/context-bridge#methods
 //
 // The copy itself is relatively fast, but the problem with transfering large
-// amounts of data is potentially running out of memory during the copy.
+// amounts of data is potentially running out of memory during the copy. For an
+// alternative, see [Note: IPC streams].
 contextBridge.exposeInMainWorld("electron", {
     // - General
     appVersion,