There are several ways to update an Electron application. The easiest and officially supported one is taking advantage of the built-in Squirrel framework and Electron's autoUpdater module.
update.electronjs.org
GitHub's Electron team maintains update.electronjs.org, a free and open-source webservice that Electron apps can use to self-update. The service is designed for Electron apps that meet the following criteria:
The easiest way to use this service is by installing update-electron-app, a Node.js module preconfigured for use with update.electronjs.org.
Install the module:
npm install update-electron-app
Invoke the updater from your app's main process file:
require('update-electron-app')()
By default, this module will check for updates at app startup, then every ten minutes. When an update is found, it will automatically be downloaded in the background. When the download completes, a dialog is displayed allowing the user to restart the app.
If you need to customize your configuration, you can
pass options to update-electron-app
or
use the update service directly.
electron-builder
If your app is packaged with electron-builder
you can use the
electron-updater module, which does not require a server and allows for updates
from S3, GitHub or any other static file host. This sidesteps Electron's built-in
update mechanism, meaning that the rest of this documentation will not apply to
electron-builder
's updater.
If you're developing a private Electron application, or if you're not publishing releases to GitHub Releases, it may be necessary to run your own update server.
Depending on your needs, you can choose from one of these:
Once you've deployed your update server, continue with importing the required modules in your code. The following code might vary for different server software, but it works like described when using Hazel.
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, dialog } = require('electron')
Next, construct the URL of the update server and tell autoUpdater about it:
const server = 'https://your-deployment-url.com'
const feed = `${server}/update/${process.platform}/${app.getVersion()}`
autoUpdater.setFeedURL(feed)
As the final step, check for updates. The example below will check every minute:
setInterval(() => {
autoUpdater.checkForUpdates()
}, 60000)
Once your application is packaged, it will receive an update for each new GitHub Release that you publish.
Now that you've configured the basic update mechanism for your application, you need to ensure that the user will get notified when there's an update. This can be achieved using the autoUpdater API events:
autoUpdater.on('update-downloaded', (event, releaseNotes, releaseName) => {
const dialogOpts = {
type: 'info',
buttons: ['Restart', 'Later'],
title: 'Application Update',
message: process.platform === 'win32' ? releaseNotes : releaseName,
detail: 'A new version has been downloaded. Restart the application to apply the updates.'
}
dialog.showMessageBox(dialogOpts, (response) => {
if (response === 0) autoUpdater.quitAndInstall()
})
})
Also make sure that errors are
being handled. Here's an example
for logging them to stderr
:
autoUpdater.on('error', message => {
console.error('There was a problem updating the application')
console.error(message)
})