# Application Distribution

## Overview

To distribute your app with Electron, you need to package and rebrand it.
To do this, you can either use specialized tooling or manual approaches.

## With tooling

You can use the following tools to distribute your application:

* [electron-forge](https://github.com/electron-userland/electron-forge)
* [electron-builder](https://github.com/electron-userland/electron-builder)
* [electron-packager](https://github.com/electron/electron-packager)

These tools will take care of all the steps you need to take to end up with a
distributable Electron application, such as bundling your application,
rebranding the executable, and setting the right icons.

You can check the example of how to package your app with `electron-forge` in
the [Quick Start guide](quick-start.md#package-and-distribute-your-application).

## Manual distribution

### With prebuilt binaries

To distribute your app manually, you need to download Electron's [prebuilt
binaries](https://github.com/electron/electron/releases). Next, the folder
containing your app should be named `app` and placed in Electron's resources
directory as shown in the following examples.

> *NOTE:* the location of Electron's prebuilt binaries is indicated
with `electron/` in the examples below.

*On macOS:*

```plaintext
electron/Electron.app/Contents/Resources/app/
├── package.json
├── main.js
└── index.html
```

*On Windows and Linux:*

```plaintext
electron/resources/app
├── package.json
├── main.js
└── index.html
```

Then execute `Electron.app` on macOS, `electron` on Linux, or `electron.exe`
on Windows, and Electron will start as your app. The `electron` directory
will then be your distribution to deliver to users.

### With an app source code archive

Instead of shipping your app by copying all of its source files, you can
package your app into an [asar] archive to improve the performance of reading
files on platforms like Windows, if you are not already using a bundler such
as Parcel or Webpack.

To use an `asar` archive to replace the `app` folder, you need to rename the
archive to `app.asar`, and put it under Electron's resources directory like
below, and Electron will then try to read the archive and start from it.

*On macOS:*

```plaintext
electron/Electron.app/Contents/Resources/
└── app.asar
```

*On Windows and Linux:*

```plaintext
electron/resources/
└── app.asar
```

You can find more details on how to use `asar` in the
[`electron/asar` repository][asar].

### Rebranding with downloaded binaries

After bundling your app into Electron, you will want to rebrand Electron
before distributing it to users.

#### macOS

You can rename `Electron.app` to any name you want, and you also have to rename
the `CFBundleDisplayName`, `CFBundleIdentifier` and `CFBundleName` fields in the
following files:

* `Electron.app/Contents/Info.plist`
* `Electron.app/Contents/Frameworks/Electron Helper.app/Contents/Info.plist`

You can also rename the helper app to avoid showing `Electron Helper` in the
Activity Monitor, but make sure you have renamed the helper app's executable
file's name.

The structure of a renamed app would be like:

```plaintext
MyApp.app/Contents
├── Info.plist
├── MacOS/
│   └── MyApp
└── Frameworks/
    └── MyApp Helper.app
        ├── Info.plist
        └── MacOS/
            └── MyApp Helper
```

#### Windows

You can rename `electron.exe` to any name you like, and edit its icon and other
information with tools like [rcedit](https://github.com/electron/rcedit).

#### Linux

You can rename the `electron` executable to any name you like.

### Rebranding by rebuilding Electron from source

It is also possible to rebrand Electron by changing the product name and
building it from source. To do this you need to set the build argument
corresponding to the product name (`electron_product_name = "YourProductName"`)
in the `args.gn` file and rebuild.

[asar]: https://github.com/electron/asar
