update-electron-app

A drop-in module that adds autoUpdating capabilities to Electron apps

Supports multiple update sources:

• The free and open-source update.electronjs.org service.
• Static file storage E.g. S3, Google Cloud Storage, etc.

Requirements

Before using this module, make sure your Electron app meets these criteria:

• Your app runs on macOS or Windows
• Your builds are code signed (macOS only)
• If using update.electronjs.org
  • Your app has a public GitHub repository
  • Your builds are published to GitHub Releases
• If using static file storage
  • Your builds are published to S3 or other similar static file host using a tool like @electron-forge/publisher-s3

Installation

npm i update-electron-app

Usage

With update.electronjs.org

Drop this anywhere in your main process:

const { updateElectronApp } = require('update-electron-app')
updateElectronApp()

By default your repository URL is found in your app's package.json file.

You can also specify custom options:

const { updateElectronApp, UpdateSourceType } = require('update-electron-app')
updateElectronApp({
  updateSource: {
    type: UpdateSourceType.ElectronPublicUpdateService,
    repo: 'github-user/repo'
  },
  updateInterval: '1 hour',
  logger: require('electron-log')
})

With static file storage

const { updateElectronApp, UpdateSourceType } = require('update-electron-app')
updateElectronApp({
  updateSource: {
    type: UpdateSourceType.StaticStorage,
    baseUrl: `https://my-bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/my-app-updates/${process.platform}/${process.arch}`
  }
})

What happens?

Once you've called updateElectronApp as documented above, that's it! Here's what happens by default:

• Your app will check for updates at startup, then every ten minutes. This interval is configurable.
• No need to wait for your app's ready event; the module figures that out.
• If an update is found, it will automatically be downloaded in the background.
• When an update is finished downloading, a dialog is displayed allowing the user to restart the app now or later.

API

update(options)

Additional Options:

• updateInterval String (optional) - How frequently to check for updates. Defaults to 10 minutes. Minimum allowed interval is 5 minutes. This is a human readable interval supported by the ms module
• logger Object (optional) - A custom logger object that defines a log function. Defaults to console. See electron-log, a module that aggregates logs from main and renderer processes into a single file.
• notifyUser Boolean (optional) - Defaults to true. When enabled the user will be prompted to apply the update immediately after download.

FAQ

What kinds of assets do I need to build?

For macOS, you'll need to build a .zip file. Use electron-forge or electron-installer-zip to package your app as a zip.

For Windows, you'll need to build a .exe and .nupkg files with electron-forge or electron-winstaller.

Why is my app launching multiple times?

Windows apps have an update process that requires multiple application restarts. You can use the electron-squirrel-startup module to improve this behavior.

Can I use this module by uploading my private app's builds to a public GitHub repository?

Yes :)

I want to manually upload my builds to a static storage solution, where do I put them?

If you publish your builds manually ensure the file structure is:

• **/{platform}/{arch}/{artifact}

For example that means that these files should exist:

• **/win32/x64/RELEASES
• **/darwin/arm64/RELEASES.json
• **/darwin/arm64/My App v1.0.0.zip (or something similar)
• ...

How does this module handle GitHub release states?

If using the public update service, the https://update.electronjs.org server handles release fetching logic. Only releases that have valid SemVer tags and are not marked as draft or pre-release will be collected by the update service.

The latest release returned by the repos/{owner}/{repo}/releases GitHub API containing all requisite binaries will be the update target.

License

MIT