Package your Electron app into OS-specific bundles (.app
, .exe
, etc.) via JavaScript or the command line.
Supported Platforms | Installation | Usage | API | Contributing | Support | Related Apps/Libraries | FAQ | Release Notes
Electron Packager is a command line tool and Node.js library that bundles Electron-based application source code with a renamed Electron executable and supporting files into folders ready for distribution.
For creating distributables like installers and Linux packages, consider using either Electron Forge (which uses Electron Packager internally), or one of the related Electron tools, which utilizes Electron Packager-created folders as a basis.
Note that packaged Electron applications can be relatively large. A zipped, minimal Electron
application is approximately the same size as the zipped prebuilt binary for a given target
platform, target arch, and Electron version
(files named electron-v${version}-${platform}-${arch}.zip
).
Electron Packager is known to run on the following host platforms:
- Windows (32/64 bit)
- macOS (formerly known as OS X)
- Linux (x86/x86_64)
It generates executables/bundles for the following target platforms:
- Windows (also known as
win32
, for x86, x86_64, and arm64 architectures) - macOS (also known as
darwin
) / Mac App Store (also known asmas
)* (for x86_64 and arm64 architectures) - Linux (for x86, x86_64, armv7l, arm64, and mips64el architectures)
* Note for macOS / Mac App Store target bundles: the .app
bundle can only be signed when building on a host macOS platform.
This module requires Node.js 10.0 or higher to run.
# For use in npm scripts (recommended)
npm install electron-packager --save-dev
# For use from the CLI
npm install electron-packager -g
Building an Electron app for the Windows target platform requires editing the Electron.exe
file.
Currently, Electron Packager uses node-rcedit to accomplish
this. A Windows executable is bundled in that Node package and needs to be run in order for this
functionality to work, so on non-Windows host platforms, Wine 1.6 or
later needs to be installed. On macOS, it is installable via Homebrew.
JavaScript API usage can be found in the API documentation.
Running electron-packager from the command line has this basic form:
electron-packager <sourcedir> <appname> --platform=<platform> --arch=<arch> [optional flags...]
This will:
- Find or download the correct release of Electron
- Use that version of Electron to create a app in
<out>/<appname>-<platform>-<arch>
(this can be customized via an optional flag)
--platform
and --arch
can be omitted, in two cases:
- If you specify
--all
instead, bundles for all valid combinations of target platforms/architectures will be created. - Otherwise, a single bundle for the host platform/architecture will be created.
For an overview of the other optional flags, run electron-packager --help
or see
usage.txt. For
detailed descriptions, see the API documentation.
If appname
is omitted, this will use the name specified by "productName" or "name" in the nearest package.json.
Characters in the Electron app name which are not allowed in all target platforms' filenames
(e.g., /
), will be replaced by hyphens (-
).
You should be able to launch the app on the platform you built for. If not, check your settings and try again.
Be careful not to include node_modules
you don't want into your final app. If you put them in
the devDependencies
section of package.json
, by default none of the modules related to those
dependencies will be copied in the app bundles. (This behavior can be turned off with the
prune: false
API option or --no-prune
CLI flag.) In addition, folders like .git
and
node_modules/.bin
will be ignored by default. You can use --ignore
to ignore files and folders
via a regular expression (not a glob pattern).
Examples include --ignore=\.gitignore
or --ignore="\.git(ignore|modules)"
.
Let's assume that you have made an app based on the electron-quick-start repository on a macOS host platform with the following file structure:
foobar
├── package.json
├── index.html
├── […other files, like the app's LICENSE…]
└── script.js
…and that the following is true:
electron-packager
is installed globallyproductName
inpackage.json
has been set toFoo Bar
- The
electron
module is in thedevDependencies
section ofpackage.json
, and set to the exact version of1.4.15
. npm install
for theFoo Bar
app has been run at least once
When one runs the following command for the first time in the foobar
directory:
electron-packager .
electron-packager
will do the following:
- Use the current directory for the
sourcedir
- Infer the
appname
from theproductName
inpackage.json
- Infer the
appVersion
from theversion
inpackage.json
- Infer the
platform
andarch
from the host, in this example,darwin
platform andx64
arch. - Download the darwin x64 build of Electron 1.4.15 (and cache the downloads in
~/.electron
) - Build the macOS
Foo Bar.app
- Place
Foo Bar.app
infoobar/Foo Bar-darwin-x64/
(since anout
directory was not specified, it used the current working directory)
The file structure now looks like:
foobar
├── Foo Bar-darwin-x64
│ ├── Foo Bar.app
│ │ └── […Mac app contents…]
│ ├── LICENSE [the Electron license]
│ └── version
├── […other application bundles, like "Foo Bar-win32-x64" (sans quotes)…]
├── package.json
├── index.html
├── […other files, like the app's LICENSE…]
└── script.js
The Foo Bar.app
folder generated can be executed by a system running macOS, which will start the packaged Electron app. This is also true of the Windows x64 build on a system running a new enough version of Windows for a 64-bit system (via Foo Bar-win32-x64/Foo Bar.exe
), and so on.
- Electron Forge - creates, builds, and distributes modern Electron applications
- electron-packager-interactive - an interactive CLI for electron-packager
- grunt-electron - grunt plugin for electron-packager
- electron-installer-zip - creates symlink-compatible ZIP files
Windows:
- electron-winstaller - Squirrel.Windows-based installer from the Electron maintainers group
- electron-windows-store - creates an AppX package for the Windows Store
- electron-wix-msi - creates traditional MSI installers
- electron-installer-windows - alternative Squirrel.Windows-based installer
macOS:
- electron-installer-dmg - creates a DMG
Linux:
- electron-installer-debian - creates a DEB file
- electron-installer-redhat - creates an RPM
- electron-installer-flatpak - creates a Flatpak file
- electron-installer-snap - creates a Snap file
These Node modules utilize Electron Packager API hooks:
- electron-packager-languages - set the locales available to Electron when packaged, which is used by the Mac App Store, among other places
- electron-packager-plugin-non-proprietary-codecs-ffmpeg - replaces the normal version of FFmpeg in Electron with a version without proprietary codecs
- electron-rebuild - rebuild native Node.js modules against the packaged Electron version