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Author SHA1 Message Date
trop[bot]
97fa059e1f docs: remove quickstart (#45209)
Co-authored-by: trop[bot] <37223003+trop[bot]@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Anny Yang <yangannyx@gmail.com>
2025-01-17 10:36:58 +01:00
Felix Rieseberg
8a64cdc0b1 docs: Why Electron? (#45191) (#45222)
* docs: Why Electron?

* Apply suggestions from code review




* Update docs/why-electron.md

---------

Co-authored-by: Sam Maddock <samuel.maddock@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Erick Zhao <erick@hotmail.ca>
2025-01-16 14:06:57 -05:00
7 changed files with 115 additions and 525 deletions

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@@ -21,7 +21,6 @@ an issue:
### Getting started
* [Introduction](tutorial/introduction.md)
* [Quick Start](tutorial/quick-start.md)
* [Process Model](tutorial/process-model.md)
### Learning the basics

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@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ To configure a local keyboard shortcut, you need to specify an [`accelerator`][]
property when creating a [MenuItem][] within the [Menu][] module.
Starting with a working application from the
[Quick Start Guide](quick-start.md), update the `main.js` to be:
[tutorial starter code][tutorial-starter-code], update the `main.js` to be:
```fiddle docs/fiddles/features/keyboard-shortcuts/local
const { app, BrowserWindow, Menu, MenuItem } = require('electron/main')
@@ -75,7 +75,7 @@ module to detect keyboard events even when the application does not have
keyboard focus.
Starting with a working application from the
[Quick Start Guide](quick-start.md), update the `main.js` to be:
[tutorial starter code][tutorial-starter-code], update the `main.js` to be:
```fiddle docs/fiddles/features/keyboard-shortcuts/global
const { app, BrowserWindow, globalShortcut } = require('electron/main')
@@ -144,7 +144,7 @@ is emitted before dispatching `keydown` and `keyup` events in the page. It can
be used to catch and handle custom shortcuts that are not visible in the menu.
Starting with a working application from the
[Quick Start Guide](quick-start.md), update the `main.js` file with the
[tutorial starter code][tutorial-starter-code], update the `main.js` file with the
following lines:
```fiddle docs/fiddles/features/keyboard-shortcuts/interception-from-main
@@ -207,3 +207,4 @@ Mousetrap.bind('up up down down left right left right b a enter', () => {
[mousetrap]: https://github.com/ccampbell/mousetrap
[dom-events]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Events
[addEventListener-api]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/EventTarget/addEventListener
[tutorial-starter-code]: tutorial-2-first-app.md#final-starter-code

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@@ -86,7 +86,7 @@ The main process also controls your application's lifecycle through Electron's
that you can use to add custom application behavior (for instance, programmatically
quitting your application, modifying the application dock, or showing an About panel).
As a practical example, the app shown in the [quick start guide][quick-start-lifecycle]
As a practical example, the app shown in the [tutorial starter code][tutorial-lifecycle]
uses `app` APIs to create a more native application window experience.
```js title='main.js'
@@ -97,7 +97,7 @@ app.on('window-all-closed', () => {
```
[app]: ../api/app.md
[quick-start-lifecycle]: ../tutorial/quick-start.md#manage-your-windows-lifecycle
[tutorial-lifecycle]: ../tutorial/tutorial-2-first-app.md#quit-the-app-when-all-windows-are-closed-windows--linux
### Native APIs

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@@ -1,513 +0,0 @@
# Quick Start
This guide will step you through the process of creating a barebones Hello World app in
Electron, similar to [`electron/electron-quick-start`][quick-start].
By the end of this tutorial, your app will open a browser window that displays a web page
with information about which Chromium, Node.js, and Electron versions are running.
[quick-start]: https://github.com/electron/electron-quick-start
## Prerequisites
To use Electron, you need to install [Node.js][node-download]. We recommend that you
use the latest `LTS` version available.
> Please install Node.js using pre-built installers for your platform.
> You may encounter incompatibility issues with different development tools otherwise.
To check that Node.js was installed correctly, type the following commands in your
terminal client:
```sh
node -v
npm -v
```
The commands should print the versions of Node.js and npm accordingly.
**Note:** Since Electron embeds Node.js into its binary, the version of Node.js running
your code is unrelated to the version running on your system.
[node-download]: https://nodejs.org/en/download/
## Create your application
### Scaffold the project
Electron apps follow the same general structure as other Node.js projects.
Start by creating a folder and initializing an npm package.
```sh npm2yarn
mkdir my-electron-app && cd my-electron-app
npm init
```
The interactive `init` command will prompt you to set some fields in your config.
There are a few rules to follow for the purposes of this tutorial:
* `entry point` should be `main.js`.
* `author` and `description` can be any value, but are necessary for
[app packaging](#package-and-distribute-your-application).
Your `package.json` file should look something like this:
```json
{
"name": "my-electron-app",
"version": "1.0.0",
"description": "Hello World!",
"main": "main.js",
"author": "Jane Doe",
"license": "MIT"
}
```
Then, install the `electron` package into your app's `devDependencies`.
```sh npm2yarn
npm install --save-dev electron
```
> Note: If you're encountering any issues with installing Electron, please
> refer to the [Advanced Installation][advanced-installation] guide.
Finally, you want to be able to execute Electron. In the [`scripts`][package-scripts]
field of your `package.json` config, add a `start` command like so:
```json
{
"scripts": {
"start": "electron ."
}
}
```
This `start` command will let you open your app in development mode.
```sh npm2yarn
npm start
```
> Note: This script tells Electron to run on your project's root folder. At this stage,
> your app will immediately throw an error telling you that it cannot find an app to run.
[advanced-installation]: ./installation.md
[package-scripts]: https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v7/using-npm/scripts
### Run the main process
The entry point of any Electron application is its `main` script. This script controls the
**main process**, which runs in a full Node.js environment and is responsible for
controlling your app's lifecycle, displaying native interfaces, performing privileged
operations, and managing renderer processes (more on that later).
During execution, Electron will look for this script in the [`main`][package-json-main]
field of the app's `package.json` config, which you should have configured during the
[app scaffolding](#scaffold-the-project) step.
To initialize the `main` script, create an empty file named `main.js` in the root folder
of your project.
> Note: If you run the `start` script again at this point, your app will no longer throw
> any errors! However, it won't do anything yet because we haven't added any code into
> `main.js`.
[package-json-main]: https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v7/configuring-npm/package-json#main
### Create a web page
Before we can create a window for our application, we need to create the content that
will be loaded into it. In Electron, each window displays web contents that can be loaded
from either a local HTML file or a remote URL.
For this tutorial, you will be doing the former. Create an `index.html` file in the root
folder of your project:
```html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<!-- https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/CSP -->
<meta http-equiv="Content-Security-Policy" content="default-src 'self'; script-src 'self'">
<title>Hello World!</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Hello World!</h1>
We are using Node.js <span id="node-version"></span>,
Chromium <span id="chrome-version"></span>,
and Electron <span id="electron-version"></span>.
</body>
</html>
```
> Note: Looking at this HTML document, you can observe that the version numbers are
> missing from the body text. We'll manually insert them later using JavaScript.
### Opening your web page in a browser window
Now that you have a web page, load it into an application window. To do so, you'll
need two Electron modules:
* The [`app`][app] module, which controls your application's event lifecycle.
* The [`BrowserWindow`][browser-window] module, which creates and manages application
windows.
Because the main process runs Node.js, you can import these as [CommonJS][commonjs]
modules at the top of your `main.js` file:
```js
const { app, BrowserWindow } = require('electron')
```
Then, add a `createWindow()` function that loads `index.html` into a new `BrowserWindow`
instance.
```js
const createWindow = () => {
const win = new BrowserWindow({
width: 800,
height: 600
})
win.loadFile('index.html')
}
```
Next, call this `createWindow()` function to open your window.
In Electron, browser windows can only be created after the `app` module's
[`ready`][app-ready] event is fired. You can wait for this event by using the
[`app.whenReady()`][app-when-ready] API. Call `createWindow()` after `whenReady()`
resolves its Promise.
```js @ts-type={createWindow:()=>void}
app.whenReady().then(() => {
createWindow()
})
```
> Note: At this point, your Electron application should successfully
> open a window that displays your web page!
[app]: ../api/app.md
[browser-window]: ../api/browser-window.md
[commonjs]: https://nodejs.org/docs/latest/api/modules.html#modules_modules_commonjs_modules
[app-ready]: ../api/app.md#event-ready
[app-when-ready]: ../api/app.md#appwhenready
### Manage your window's lifecycle
Although you can now open a browser window, you'll need some additional boilerplate code
to make it feel more native to each platform. Application windows behave differently on
each OS, and Electron puts the responsibility on developers to implement these
conventions in their app.
In general, you can use the `process` global's [`platform`][node-platform] attribute
to run code specifically for certain operating systems.
#### Quit the app when all windows are closed (Windows & Linux)
On Windows and Linux, exiting all windows generally quits an application entirely.
To implement this, listen for the `app` module's [`'window-all-closed'`][window-all-closed]
event, and call [`app.quit()`][app-quit] if the user is not on macOS (`darwin`).
```js
app.on('window-all-closed', () => {
if (process.platform !== 'darwin') app.quit()
})
```
[node-platform]: https://nodejs.org/api/process.html#process_process_platform
[window-all-closed]: ../api/app.md#event-window-all-closed
[app-quit]: ../api/app.md#appquit
#### Open a window if none are open (macOS)
Whereas Linux and Windows apps quit when they have no windows open, macOS apps generally
continue running even without any windows open, and activating the app when no windows
are available should open a new one.
To implement this feature, listen for the `app` module's [`activate`][activate]
event, and call your existing `createWindow()` method if no browser windows are open.
Because windows cannot be created before the `ready` event, you should only listen for
`activate` events after your app is initialized. Do this by attaching your event listener
from within your existing `whenReady()` callback.
[activate]: ../api/app.md#event-activate-macos
```js @ts-type={createWindow:()=>void}
app.whenReady().then(() => {
createWindow()
app.on('activate', () => {
if (BrowserWindow.getAllWindows().length === 0) createWindow()
})
})
```
> Note: At this point, your window controls should be fully functional!
### Access Node.js from the renderer with a preload script
Now, the last thing to do is print out the version numbers for Electron and its
dependencies onto your web page.
Accessing this information is trivial to do in the main process through Node's
global `process` object. However, you can't just edit the DOM from the main
process because it has no access to the renderer's `document` context.
They're in entirely different processes!
> Note: If you need a more in-depth look at Electron processes, see the
> [Process Model][] document.
This is where attaching a **preload** script to your renderer comes in handy.
A preload script runs before the renderer process is loaded, and has access to both
renderer globals (e.g. `window` and `document`) and a Node.js environment.
Create a new script named `preload.js` as such:
```js
window.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', () => {
const replaceText = (selector, text) => {
const element = document.getElementById(selector)
if (element) element.innerText = text
}
for (const dependency of ['chrome', 'node', 'electron']) {
replaceText(`${dependency}-version`, process.versions[dependency])
}
})
```
The above code accesses the Node.js `process.versions` object and runs a basic `replaceText`
helper function to insert the version numbers into the HTML document.
To attach this script to your renderer process, pass in the path to your preload script
to the `webPreferences.preload` option in your existing `BrowserWindow` constructor.
```js
const { app, BrowserWindow } = require('electron')
// include the Node.js 'path' module at the top of your file
const path = require('node:path')
// modify your existing createWindow() function
const createWindow = () => {
const win = new BrowserWindow({
width: 800,
height: 600,
webPreferences: {
preload: path.join(__dirname, 'preload.js')
}
})
win.loadFile('index.html')
}
// ...
```
There are two Node.js concepts that are used here:
* The [`__dirname`][dirname] string points to the path of the currently executing script
(in this case, your project's root folder).
* The [`path.join`][path-join] API joins multiple path segments together, creating a
combined path string that works across all platforms.
We use a path relative to the currently executing JavaScript file so that your relative
path will work in both development and packaged mode.
[Process Model]: ./process-model.md
[dirname]: https://nodejs.org/api/modules.html#modules_dirname
[path-join]: https://nodejs.org/api/path.html#path_path_join_paths
### Bonus: Add functionality to your web contents
At this point, you might be wondering how to add more functionality to your application.
For any interactions with your web contents, you want to add scripts to your
renderer process. Because the renderer runs in a normal web environment, you can add a
`<script>` tag right before your `index.html` file's closing `</body>` tag to include
any arbitrary scripts you want:
```html
<script src="./renderer.js"></script>
```
The code contained in `renderer.js` can then use the same JavaScript APIs and tooling
you use for typical front-end development, such as using [`webpack`][webpack] to bundle
and minify your code or [React][react] to manage your user interfaces.
[webpack]: https://webpack.js.org
[react]: https://reactjs.org
### Recap
After following the above steps, you should have a fully functional
Electron application that looks like this:
![Simplest Electron app](../images/simplest-electron-app.png)
<!--TODO(erickzhao): Remove the individual code blocks for static website -->
The full code is available below:
```js
// main.js
// Modules to control application life and create native browser window
const { app, BrowserWindow } = require('electron')
const path = require('node:path')
const createWindow = () => {
// Create the browser window.
const mainWindow = new BrowserWindow({
width: 800,
height: 600,
webPreferences: {
preload: path.join(__dirname, 'preload.js')
}
})
// and load the index.html of the app.
mainWindow.loadFile('index.html')
// Open the DevTools.
// mainWindow.webContents.openDevTools()
}
// This method will be called when Electron has finished
// initialization and is ready to create browser windows.
// Some APIs can only be used after this event occurs.
app.whenReady().then(() => {
createWindow()
app.on('activate', () => {
// On macOS it's common to re-create a window in the app when the
// dock icon is clicked and there are no other windows open.
if (BrowserWindow.getAllWindows().length === 0) createWindow()
})
})
// Quit when all windows are closed, except on macOS. There, it's common
// for applications and their menu bar to stay active until the user quits
// explicitly with Cmd + Q.
app.on('window-all-closed', () => {
if (process.platform !== 'darwin') app.quit()
})
// In this file you can include the rest of your app's specific main process
// code. You can also put them in separate files and require them here.
```
```js
// preload.js
// All the Node.js APIs are available in the preload process.
// It has the same sandbox as a Chrome extension.
window.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', () => {
const replaceText = (selector, text) => {
const element = document.getElementById(selector)
if (element) element.innerText = text
}
for (const dependency of ['chrome', 'node', 'electron']) {
replaceText(`${dependency}-version`, process.versions[dependency])
}
})
```
```html
<!--index.html-->
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<!-- https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/CSP -->
<meta http-equiv="Content-Security-Policy" content="default-src 'self'; script-src 'self'">
<title>Hello World!</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Hello World!</h1>
We are using Node.js <span id="node-version"></span>,
Chromium <span id="chrome-version"></span>,
and Electron <span id="electron-version"></span>.
<!-- You can also require other files to run in this process -->
<script src="./renderer.js"></script>
</body>
</html>
```
```fiddle docs/fiddles/quick-start
```
To summarize all the steps we've done:
* We bootstrapped a Node.js application and added Electron as a dependency.
* We created a `main.js` script that runs our main process, which controls our app
and runs in a Node.js environment. In this script, we used Electron's `app` and
`BrowserWindow` modules to create a browser window that displays web content
in a separate process (the renderer).
* In order to access certain Node.js functionality in the renderer, we attached
a preload script to our `BrowserWindow` constructor.
## Package and distribute your application
The fastest way to distribute your newly created app is using
[Electron Forge](https://www.electronforge.io).
:::info
To build an RPM package for Linux, you will need to [install its required system dependencies](https://www.electronforge.io/config/makers/rpm).
:::
1. Add a description to your `package.json` file, otherwise rpmbuild will fail. Blank description are not valid.
2. Add Electron Forge as a development dependency of your app, and use its `import` command to set up
Forge's scaffolding:
```sh npm2yarn
npm install --save-dev @electron-forge/cli
npx electron-forge import
✔ Checking your system
✔ Initializing Git Repository
✔ Writing modified package.json file
✔ Installing dependencies
✔ Writing modified package.json file
✔ Fixing .gitignore
We have ATTEMPTED to convert your app to be in a format that electron-forge understands.
Thanks for using "electron-forge"!!!
```
3. Create a distributable using Forge's `make` command:
```sh npm2yarn
npm run make
> my-electron-app@1.0.0 make /my-electron-app
> electron-forge make
✔ Checking your system
✔ Resolving Forge Config
We need to package your application before we can make it
✔ Preparing to Package Application for arch: x64
✔ Preparing native dependencies
✔ Packaging Application
Making for the following targets: zip
✔ Making for target: zip - On platform: darwin - For arch: x64
```
Electron Forge creates the `out` folder where your package will be located:
```plain
// Example for macOS
out/
├── out/make/zip/darwin/x64/my-electron-app-darwin-x64-1.0.0.zip
├── ...
└── out/my-electron-app-darwin-x64/my-electron-app.app/Contents/MacOS/my-electron-app
```

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@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ If your app doesn't use any native modules, then it's really easy to create an A
1. Make sure that your app's `node_modules` directory is empty.
2. Using a _Command Prompt_, run `set npm_config_arch=arm64` before running `npm install`/`yarn install` as usual.
3. [If you have Electron installed as a development dependency](quick-start.md#prerequisites), npm will download and unpack the arm64 version. You can then package and distribute your app as normal.
3. [If you have Electron installed as a development dependency](tutorial-2-first-app.md#initializing-your-npm-project), npm will download and unpack the arm64 version. You can then package and distribute your app as normal.
## General considerations

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@@ -57,7 +57,7 @@ To set user tasks for your application, you can use
##### Set user tasks
Starting with a working application from the
[Quick Start Guide](quick-start.md), update the `main.js` file with the
[tutorial starter code][tutorial-starter-code], update the `main.js` file with the
following lines:
```js
@@ -121,7 +121,7 @@ To set thumbnail toolbar in your application, you need to use
##### Set thumbnail toolbar
Starting with a working application from the
[Quick Start Guide](quick-start.md), update the `main.js` file with the
[tutorial starter code][tutorial-starter-code], update the `main.js` file with the
following lines:
```js
@@ -185,7 +185,7 @@ To set the overlay icon for a window, you need to use the
#### Example
Starting with a working application from the
[Quick Start Guide](quick-start.md), update the `main.js` file with the
[tutorial starter code][tutorial-starter-code], update the `main.js` file with the
following lines:
```js
@@ -214,7 +214,7 @@ To flash the BrowserWindow taskbar button, you need to use the
#### Example
Starting with a working application from the
[Quick Start Guide](quick-start.md), update the `main.js` file with the
[tutorial starter code][tutorial-starter-code], update the `main.js` file with the
following lines:
```js
@@ -231,10 +231,10 @@ In the above example, it is called when the window comes into focus,
but you might use a timeout or some other event to disable it.
[msdn-flash-frame]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winuser/nf-winuser-flashwindow#remarks
[setthumbarbuttons]: ../api/browser-window.md#winsetthumbarbuttonsbuttons-windows
[setusertaskstasks]: ../api/app.md#appsetusertaskstasks-windows
[setoverlayicon]: ../api/browser-window.md#winsetoverlayiconoverlay-description-windows
[flashframe]: ../api/browser-window.md#winflashframeflag
[recent-documents]: ./recent-documents.md
[progress-bar]: ./progress-bar.md
[tutorial-starter-code]: ../tutorial/tutorial-2-first-app.md#final-starter-code

103
docs/why-electron.md Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,103 @@
# Why Electron
Electron is a framework enabling developers to build cross-platform desktop applications for macOS, Windows, and Linux by combining web technologies (HTML, JavaScript, CSS) with Node.js and native code. It is open-source, MIT-licensed, and free for both commercial and personal use. In this document, well explain why companies and developers choose Electron.
We can split up the benefits of Electron in two questions: First, why should you use web technologies to build your application? Then, why should you choose Electron as the framework to do so?
If youre already using web technologies for your application, you can skip straight to the `Why Electron?` section below.
## Why choose web technologies
Web technologies include HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and WebAssembly. Theyre the storefront of the modern Internet. Those technologies have emerged as the best choice for building user interfaces — both for consumer applications as well as mission-critical business applications. This is true both for applications that need to run in a browser as well as desktop applications that are not accessible from a browser. Our bold claim here is that this isnt just true for cross-platform applications that need to run on multiple operating systems but true overall.
As an example, NASAs actual [Mission Control](https://github.com/nasa/openmct) is written with web technologies. The [Bloomberg Terminal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomberg_Terminal), the computer system found at every financial institution, is written with web technologies and runs inside Chromium. It costs $25,000 per user, per year. The McDonalds ordering kiosk, powering the worlds biggest food retailer, is entirely built with Chromium. The [SpaceXs Dragon 2 space capsule](https://old.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/gxb7j1/we_are_the_spacex_software_team_ask_us_anything/ft62781/?context=3) uses Chromium to display its interface. You get the point: web technologies are a great tech stack to build user interfaces.
Here are the reasons we, the Electron maintainers, are betting on the web.
### Versatility
Modern versions of HTML and CSS enable your developers and designers to fully express themselves. The webs showcase includes Google Earth, Netflix, Spotify, Gmail, Facebook, Airbnb, or GitHub. Whatever interface your application needs, you will be able to express it with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
If you want to focus on building a great product without figuring out how you can realize your designers vision in a specific UI framework, the web is a safe bet.
### Reliability
Web technologies are the most-used foundation for user interfaces on the planet. The have been hardened accordingly. Modern computers have been optimized from the CPU to the operating system to be good at running web technologies. The manufacturers of your users devices—be that an Android phone or the latest MacBook—will ensure that they can visit websites, play videos on YouTube, or display emails. In turn, theyll also ensure that your app has a stable foundation, even if you have just one user.
If you want to focus on building a great product without debugging a weird quirk that nobody has found before, the web is a safe bet.
### Interoperability
Whatever provider or customer data you need to interact with, they will have probably thought of an integration path with the web. Depending on your technology choice, embedding a YouTube video either takes 30 seconds or requires you to hire a team devoted to streaming and hardware-accelerated video decoding. In the case of YouTube, using anything other than the provided players is actually against their terms and conditions, so youll likely embed a browser frame before you implement your own video streaming decoder.
There will be virtually no platform where your app cannot run if you build it with web technologies. Virtually all devices with a display—be that an ATM, a car infotainment system, a smart TV, a fridge, or a Nintendo Switch—come with means to display web technologies. The web is safe bet if you want to be cross-platform.
### Ubiquity
Its easy to find developers with experience building with web technologies. If youre a developer, itll be easy to find answers to your questions on Google, Stack Overflow, GitHub, or a coding AI of your choice. Whatever problem you need to solve, its likely that somebody has solved it well before—and that you can find the answer to the puzzle online.
If you want to focus on building a great product with ample access to resources and materials, the web is a safe bet.
## Why choose Electron
Electron combines Chromium, Node.js, and the ability to write custom native code into one framework for building powerful desktop applications. There are three main reasons to use Electron:
### Enterprise-grade
Electron is reliable, secure, stable, and mature. It is the premier choice for companies building their flagship product. We have a list of some of those companies on our homepage, but just among chat apps, Slack, Discord, and Skype are built with Electron. Among AI applications, both OpenAIs ChatGPT and Anthropics Claude use Electron. Visual Studio Code, Loom, Canva, Notion, Docker, and countless other leading developers of software bet on Electron.
We did make it a priority to make Electron easy to work with and a delight for developers. Thats likely the main reason why Electron became as popular as it is today — but what keeps Electron alive and thriving is the maintainers focus on making Electron as stable, secure, performant, and capable of mission-critical use cases for end users as possible. Were building an Electron that is ready to be used in scenarios where unfixable bugs, unpatched security holes, and outages of any kind are worst-case scenarios.
### Mature
Our current estimation is that most desktop computers on the planet run at least one Electron app. Electron has grown by prioritizing talent in its maintainer group, fostering excellent and sustainable engineering practices in managing the ongoing maintenance, and proactively inviting companies betting on Electron to directly contribute to the project. Were an impact project with the OpenJS foundation, which is itself a part of the Linux foundation. We share resources and expertise with other foundation projects like Node.js, ESLint, Webpack - or the Linux Kernel or Kubernetes.
What does all of that mean for you, a developer, in practice?
- **Reliable release schedule**: Electron will release a new major version in lockstep with every second major Chromium release, usually on the same day as Chromium. A lot of work, both in the form of building processes and tools, but also in terms of raw invested hours every week, has to go into making that happen.
- **No dictators**: Sometimes, betting on a technology also requires you to bet on a single person or company. In turn, it requires you to trust that the person or company never has a breakdown, starts fighting you directly, or does anything else drastic thatll force you rethink your entire tech stack. Electron is maintained by a diverse set of companies (Microsoft, Slack/Salesforce, Notion, and more) and will continue to welcome more companies interested in ensuring their “seat at the decision-making table”.
### Stability, security, performance
Electron delivers the best experience on all target platforms (macOS, Windows, Linux) by bundling the latest version of Chromium, V8, and Node.js directly with the application binary. When it comes to running and rendering web content with upmost stability, security, and performance, we currently believe that stack to be “best in class”.
#### Why bundle anything at all
You might wonder why we bundle Chromiums web stack with our apps when most modern operating systems already ship a browser and some form of web view. Bundling doesnt just increase the amount of work for Electron maintainers dramatically, it also increases the total disk size of Electron apps (most apps are >100MB). Many Electron maintainers once developed applications that did make use of embedded web views — and have since accepted the increased disk size and maintainer work as a worthy trade-off.
When using an operating system's built-in web view, you're limited by the browser version included in the oldest operating system version you need to support. We have found the following problems with this approach:
- **Stability**: The modern web technology stack is complex, and as a result, youll sooner or later encounter bugs. If you use the operating systems web view, your only recourse will be to ask your customers to upgrade their operating system. If no upgrade is available for that machine (because of no ability to upgrade to the latest macOS or Windows 11), youll have to ask them to buy a new computer. If youre unlucky, youre now losing a major customer because they will not upgrade their entire fleet of thousands of machines just because one team wanted to try your startups app. You have _no recourse_ in this situation. Even the risk of that happening is unacceptable to the companies that employ the Electron maintainers.
- **Security:** Similar to how you can fix stability bugs by releasing an app update, you can also release security fixes to your application without asking your customer to upgrade their operating system. Even if operating system providers prioritize updates to their built-in browser, we have not seen them reliably update the built-in web views with similar urgency. Bundling a web renderer gives you, the developer, control.
- **Performance:** For simple HTML documents, a built-in web view will sometimes use fewer resources than an app with a bundled framework. For bigger apps, it is our experience that we can deliver better performance with the latest version of Chromium than we can with built-in web views. You might think that the built-in view can share a lot of resources with other apps and the operating system— but for security reasons, apps have to run in their own sandboxes, isolated from each other. At that point, the question is whether the OS web view is more performant than Chromium. Across many apps, our experience is that bundling Chromium and Node.js enables us to build better and more performant experiences.
#### Why bundle Chromium and Node.js
Electron aims to enable the apps it supports to deliver the best possible user experience, followed by the best possible developer experience. Chromium is currently the best cross-platform rendering stack available. Node.js uses Chromiums JavaScript engine V8, allowing us to combine the powers of both.
- **Native code when you want it**: Thanks to Node.js mature native addon system, you can always write native code. There is no system API out of reach for you. Whatever macOS, Windows, or Linux feature youll want to integrate with —as long as you can do it in C, C++, Objective-C, Rust, or another native language, youll be able to do it in Electron. Again, this gives you, the developer, maximum control. With Electron, you can use web technologies without choosing _only_ web technologies.
### Developer experience
To summarize, we aim to build an Electron that is mature, enterprise-grade, and ready for mission-critical applications. We prioritize reliability, stability, security, and performance. That said, you might also choose Electron for its developer experience:
- **Powerful ecosystem**: Anything you find on npm will run inside Electron. Any resource available to you about how to work with Node.js also applies to Electron. In addition, Electron itself has a [thriving ecosystem](https://www.npmjs.com/search?q=electron) — including plenty of choices for installers, updaters, deeper operating system-integration, and more.
- **Plenty of built-in capabilities:** Over the last ten years, Electrons core has gained plenty of native capabilities that you might need to build your application. Written in C++ and Objective-C, Electron has [dozens of easy-to-use APIs for deeper operating-system integration](https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/api/app) — like advanced window customization for transparent or oddly shaped widgets, receiving push notifications from the Apple Push Notification Network, or handling a custom URL protocol for your app.
- **Open source**: The entire stack is open source and open to your inspection. This ensures your freedom to add any feature or fix any bug you might encounter in the future.
- **Native code when you need it:** It bears repeating that Electron allows you to mix and match web technologies and C++, C, Objective-C, Rust, and other native languages. Whether it be SQLite, a whole LLM, or just the ability to call one specific native API, Electron will make it easy.
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## Why choose something else
As outlined above, the web is an amazing platform for building interfaces. That doesnt mean that we, the maintainers, would build _everything_ with HTML and CSS. Here are some notable exceptions:
**Resource-Constrained Environments and IoT:** In scenarios with very limited memory or processing power (say, one megabyte of memory and 100MHz of processing power on a low-powered ARM Cortex-M), you will likely need to use a low-level language to directly talk to the display to output basic text and images. Even on slightly higher-powered single-chip devices you might want to consider an embedded UI framework. A classic example is a smart watch.
**Small Disk Footprint**: Zipped Electron apps are usually around 80 to 100 Megabytes. If a smaller disk footprint is a hard requirement, youll have to use something else.
**Operating System UI Frameworks and Libraries**: By allowing you to write native code, Electron can do anything a native application can do, including the use of the operating systems UI components, like WinUI, SwiftUI, or AppKit. In practice, most Electron apps make rare use of that ability. If you want the majority of your app to be built with operating system-provided interface components, youll likely be better off building fully native apps for each operating system youd like to target. Its not that its impossible with Electron, itll just likely be an overall easier development process.
**Games and Real-Time Graphics:** If you're building a high-performance game or application requiring complex real-time 3D graphics, native frameworks like Unity, Unreal Engine, or DirectX/OpenGL will provide better performance and more direct access to graphics hardware. Web fans might point out caveats, like the fact that even Unreal Engine ships with Chromium — or that WebGPU and WebGL are developing rapidly and many game engines, including the ones listed here, can now output their games in a format that runs in a browser. That said, if you asked us to build the next AAA game, wed likely use something else than just web technologies.
**Embedding Lightweight Websites**: Electron apps typically are mostly web apps with native code sprinkled in where useful. Processing-heavy Electron applications tend to write the UI in HTML/CSS and build the backend in Rust, C++, or another native language. If youre planning to build a primarily native application that also wants to display a little website in a specific view, you might be better off using the OS-provided web view or something like [ultralight](https://ultralig.ht/).