Electron

Electron is an application developed by GitHub to build cross platform desktop apps using web technologies. They are rendered using the Chromium browser engine and back end is using the Node.js runtime environment.

Installation

Install the electron package for the latest version.

Some applications require older electron versions. You can install previous versions in parallel with latest. The corresponding packages are suffixed with version number, for example electron30^AUR.

Tips and tricks

Secret Service API

Electron provides the safestorage API to interact with a keyring compatible with the FreeDesktop.org's Secret Service API. Example of supported keyrings are GNOME/Keyring through GNOME libsecret, KDE Wallet and KeePass.

The backend can be chosen on the command-line with the --password-store flag when running an Electron application. As an example, running electron-desktop (built with Electron) to interact with libsecret or KeePass:

$ electron-desktop --password-store="gnome-libsecret"

Turn any website to application

Sometimes you need to use a specific web site, but use it as an application. With nodejs-nativefier^AUR you can turn any website to an electron application. For example, there is a website showing you the pressed buttons on the gamepad, and you want to create a separate window for that. Run:

$ nativefier --name gamepad-overlay \
--platform linux --arch x64 \
--width 1024 --height 768 \
--tray --disable-dev-tools \
--single-instance "https://gamepadviewer.com/?p=1&s=4&smeter=1"

Now in your home directory there will be a binary ~/gamepad-overlay-linux-x64/gamepad-overlay. You can run it and have the gamepad overlay in its own window.

For more options, see the project homepage.

Enable Wayland

See Wayland#Electron.