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Electron Manager is an NPM module for Electron developers with tools, helper functions, and utilities for building a flawless Electron app 🚀

📦 Install Electron Manager

Install with npm:

1npm install electron-manager

Note: This module requires a peer dependency of Electron. The required version can be found in the package.json.

🦄 Features

• Correctly handles a ton of things that Electron falls short on in cross-platform cases like: setAsDefaultProtocolClient, getApplicationNameForProtocol, isDefaultProtocolClient, and more
• Provides a simple cross-platform method to set your app to auto launch at startup (Includes Windows Store and some Linux distros)
• Provides an easy cross-platform method to set your app as the default browser

📘 Example Setup

After installing via npm, simply require the library and begin enjoying this simple tool 🧰.

1// In your main.js file
2const Manager = new (require('electron-manager'))({
3  appName: 'Electron',
4  appId: 'electron',
5})

Options

• appName: This should be the name of your app and what end users would see, such as Electron.
  • The appName is used to get/set things on Windows so it should be whatever your Applications\\*.exe file's name is.
• appId: This should be the id of your app such as electron.
  • The appId is used to get/set protocols on Linux so it should be whatever your *.desktop file's name.

Properties

• environment: Can be either development or production (uses electron-is-dev).
• isLinux: Will be true if your app is running on Linux.
• isSnap: Will be true if your app is running as a Linux Snap (uses electron-is-snap).
• storeName: Can be either mac, windows, snap, or none.

.app() Library

This library practically replaces some methods of Electron's app API. You don't need to use these and the original APIs as these methods can replace the existing ones.

.app().setAsDefaultProtocolClient(protocol, options)

Correctly sets your app as the default handler for a protocol. Calls xdg-mime default and xdg-settings set under the hood which Electron fails to do for Linux.

1await Manager.app().setAsDefaultProtocolClient('electron');
2
3// Output: null (for now)

.app().getApplicationNameForProtocol(protocol)

Correctly gets the app name that handles a protocol. Protocol must include :// just like normal. Calls xdg-settings get default-url-scheme-handler under the hood which Electron fails to do for Linux.

1await Manager.app().getApplicationNameForProtocol('electron');
2
3// Output: String

.app().isDefaultProtocolClient(protocol, options)

Correctly checks whether your app is the default handler for a protocol. Calls xdg-settings get default-url-scheme-handler under the hood which Electron fails to do for Linux.

1await Manager.app().isDefaultProtocolClient('electron');
2
3// Output: Boolean

.app().setLoginItemSettings(options)

This is how you get an auto-launching app!. Automatically adds a super helpful flag: --was-opened-at-login="true".

The only distros this doesn't seem to work on are MAS and Linux Snap. RIP.

1await Manager.app().setLoginItemSettings({
2  openAtLogin: true,
3});
4
5// Output: null (for now)

.app().setAsDefaultBrowser(options)

Correctly sets your app as a default browser for every platform. Yes, even on Windows!.

1await Manager.app().setAsDefaultBrowser();
2
3// Output: null (for now)

Note: If you want to do this on Windows, you need to somehow distribute a helper executable called SetUserFTA and then supply the path to this in the option setUserFTAPath. This option has no effect on other platforms since other platforms work more easily.

1const { app } = require('electron');
2const path = require('path');
3const appDataPath = path.resolve(app.getPath('appData'), 'set-user-fta.exe')
4await Manager.app().setAsDefaultBrowser({
5  setUserFTAPath: appDataPath,
6});
7
8// Output: null (for now)

.app().isDefaultBrowser(options)

Correctly returns whether your app is the default browser on any platform.

1await Manager.app().isDefaultBrowser();
2
3// Output: Boolean

.app().wasOpenedAtLogin(options)

Correctly returns whether your app was opened at login. Remember that --was-opened-at-login="true" flag we set earlier when we called await Manager.app().setLoginItemSettings()? Wow this is so easy!.

1await Manager.app().wasOpenedAtLogin();
2
3// Output: Boolean

Note: Before you get your hopes too high, there's no way to set or get the --was-opened-at-login="true" flag on Linux or Windows Store yet. To compensate, this method will check to see if the app was opened within 120 seconds of the OS booting up or the user logging in. Thus, it's best to call this as early as possible in your app.

It's by no means a perfect solution but it will work 90% of the time. You can change the threshold to whatever seconds you want:

1await Manager.app().wasOpenedAtLogin({
2  threshold: 60, // Don't go too low (most people have slow-ass computers)
3});
4
5// Output: Boolean

🧩 Important API Notes

Default DOM operations

• brand-name-element: Set to productName in package.json
• app-id-element: Set to name in package.json
• current-version-element: Set to version in package.json
• current-year-element: Set to the current year
• manager-initialized-element: Removed when ElectronManager finishes initializing.
• upgrade-account-btn: Enabled if user.plan.id === basic

App arguments

Use arguments like npm start -- --name="value" to test and streamline your development

• --useDevelopmentURLs="true" (true): Will use localhost:4000 instead of live URLS
  • Can be true or false
• --enableLiveSentry="false" (false): Will actually send errors to Sentry if true
  • Can be true or false
• --was-opened-at-login="false" (false): Change Electron Manager's behavior for handling if the app was opened at login.
  • Can be true or false
• --devUpdateStatus="available" (available): Change the electron-updater flow.
  • available: Will show an update is available and "install" it
  • unavailable: Will show an update is unavailable
  • error: Will show an error

Other libraries and features

This is just the beginning. More great features and fixes will be coming soon

🗨️ Final Words

If you are still having difficulty, we would love for you to post a question to the Electron is Snap issues page. It is much easier to answer questions that include your code and relevant files! So if you can provide them, we'd be extremely grateful (and more likely to help you find the answer!)

📚 Projects Using this Library

Somiibo: A Social Media Bot with an open-source module library. JekyllUp: A website devoted to sharing the best Jekyll themes. Slapform: A backend processor for your HTML forms on static sites. Sniips: A modern, hackable snippet manager Proxifly: An API to get free proxies for your services. Optiic: A free OCR image processing API. SoundGrail Music App: A resource for producers, musicians, and DJs.

Ask us to have your project listed! :)

📚 Other Great Libraries

node-powertools: An NPM module for backend and frontend developers that exposes powerful utilities and tools. electron-is-snap: An NPM module for checking if your app is running in a snap environment optiic: An OCR image processing API. proxifly: An API to find proxies for your apps. slapform: A form backend API.