📡 update.electronjs.org

A free service that makes it easy for open-source Electron apps to update themselves.

Requirements

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

• Your app runs on macOS or Windows
• Your app has a public GitHub repository
• Your builds are published to GitHub Releases
• Your builds are code signed (macOS only)

Quick Setup

Install update-electron-app as a runtime dependency (not a devDependency):

npm install update-electron-app --save

Call it from in your main process file:

require('update-electron-app')()

And that's all it takes! To customize, see the update-electron-app API.

Once your application is packaged, it will update itself for each new GitHub Release that you publish.

Manual Setup

Use something like the following setup to add automatic updates to your application:

Important: Please ensure that the code below will only be executed in your packaged app, and not in development. You can use electron-is-dev to check for the environment.

const { app, autoUpdater } = require('electron')

Next, construct the URL of the update server and tell autoUpdater about it:

const server = 'https://update.electronjs.org'
const feed = `${server}/OWNER/REPO/${process.platform}-${process.arch}/${app.getVersion()}`

autoUpdater.setFeedURL(feed)

As the final step, check for updates. The example below will check every 10 minutes:

setInterval(() => {
  autoUpdater.checkForUpdates()
}, 10 * 60 * 1000)

Once your application is packaged, it will update itself for each new GitHub Release that you publish.

Routes

The following API endpoints are available:

• /:owner/:repo/:platform/:version
• /:owner/:repo/:platform-:arch/:version
• /:owner/:repo/:platform/:version/RELEASES

These API endpoints support the query path arguments as defined below:

• :owner - GitHub repository owner (organization or user)
• :repo - GitHub repository name
• :platform - Platform type
  • Windows: win32
  • macOS: darwin
• :arch - Architecture type
  • Windows: x64, ia32, arm64
  • macOS: x64, arm64, universal
• :version - Semantic Versioning (SemVer) compatible application version number

Asset Naming Convention

This project supports specific naming conventions for GitHub Releases assets.

The following heuristics are used to identify update availability for a specific platform and architecture:

macOS Assets

• Asset must be a .zip file.
• Asset name must include one of the following platform identifiers: -mac, -darwin, or -osx.
• Asset name may specify the architecture (if not specified, will default to -x64):
  • -arm64 for Apple Silicon.
  • -x64 for Intel-based macOS.
  • -universal for Universal binaries. Example asset names:
• app-mac-arm64-0.0.1.zip
• app-mac-arm64.zip
• app-0.0.1-osx-x64.zip
• app-osx-x64.zip
• app-darwin-universal.zip
• app-mac.zip (no architecture specified - treated as -x64)

Windows Assets

• Asset must be a .zip or .exe file.
• Asset name must include the -win32 platform identifier.
• Asset name may specify the architecture (if not specified, will default to -x64):
  • -ia32 for 32-bit Windows.
  • -x64 for 64-bit Windows.
  • -arm64 for ARM-based Windows.
• .exe files without specific architecture tags or the -win32 platform identifier are assumed to be -x64 by default.

Example asset names:

• app-win32-ia32-0.0.1.zip
• app-win32-ia32.zip
• app-0.0.1-win32-x64.zip
• app-win32-x64.zip
• app-win32-arm64.zip
• app-win32-arm64.exe
• app-win32-arm64-v1.2.3.exe
• app-win32.exe (no architecture specified - treated as -x64)
• app-installer.exe (generic .exe file with no architecture or platform identifier specified - treated as -x64)

Development

You'll first need to have a running Redis server. There are two options:

1. Locally: Install Redis locally and run it directly with redis-server. Guides can be found here.
2. Docker: Install and run Redis with docker run -p 6379:6379 -it redis/redis-stack-server:latest.

$ yarn
$ GH_TOKEN=TOKEN npm start

To try with an actual electron app, run:

$ yarn start &
$ cd example
$ yarn

On Darwin:

$ npm run build
$ ./out/test-darwin-x64/test.app/Contents/MacOS/test

On Windows:

$ npm run build
$ "example\out\make\squirrel.windows\x64\test-0.0.0 Setup.exe"