Electron Documentation1.7.8

Docs / API / dialog

dialog

Display native system dialogs for opening and saving files, alerting, etc.

Process: Main

An example of showing a dialog to select multiple files and directories:

const {dialog} = require('electron')
console.log(dialog.showOpenDialog({properties: ['openFile', 'openDirectory', 'multiSelections']}))

The Dialog is opened from Electron’s main thread. If you want to use the dialog object from a renderer process, remember to access it using the remote:

const {dialog} = require('electron').remote
console.log(dialog)

Methods

The dialog module has the following methods:

dialog.showOpenDialog([browserWindow, ]options[, callback])

Returns String[], an array of file paths chosen by the user, if the callback is provided it returns undefined.

The browserWindow argument allows the dialog to attach itself to a parent window, making it modal.

The filters specifies an array of file types that can be displayed or selected when you want to limit the user to a specific type. For example:

{
  filters: [
    {name: 'Images', extensions: ['jpg', 'png', 'gif']},
    {name: 'Movies', extensions: ['mkv', 'avi', 'mp4']},
    {name: 'Custom File Type', extensions: ['as']},
    {name: 'All Files', extensions: ['*']}
  ]
}

The extensions array should contain extensions without wildcards or dots (e.g. 'png' is good but '.png' and '*.png' are bad). To show all files, use the '*' wildcard (no other wildcard is supported).

If a callback is passed, the API call will be asynchronous and the result will be passed via callback(filenames)

Note: On Windows and Linux an open dialog can not be both a file selector and a directory selector, so if you set properties to ['openFile', 'openDirectory'] on these platforms, a directory selector will be shown.

dialog.showSaveDialog([browserWindow, ]options[, callback])

Returns String, the path of the file chosen by the user, if a callback is provided it returns undefined.

The browserWindow argument allows the dialog to attach itself to a parent window, making it modal.

The filters specifies an array of file types that can be displayed, see dialog.showOpenDialog for an example.

If a callback is passed, the API call will be asynchronous and the result will be passed via callback(filename)

dialog.showMessageBox([browserWindow, ]options[, callback])

Returns Integer, the index of the clicked button, if a callback is provided it returns undefined.

Shows a message box, it will block the process until the message box is closed. It returns the index of the clicked button.

The browserWindow argument allows the dialog to attach itself to a parent window, making it modal.

If a callback is passed, the dialog will not block the process. The API call will be asynchronous and the result will be passed via callback(response).

dialog.showErrorBox(title, content)

Displays a modal dialog that shows an error message.

This API can be called safely before the ready event the app module emits, it is usually used to report errors in early stage of startup. If called before the app readyevent on Linux, the message will be emitted to stderr, and no GUI dialog will appear.

dialog.showCertificateTrustDialog([browserWindow, ]options, callback) macOS Windows

On macOS, this displays a modal dialog that shows a message and certificate information, and gives the user the option of trusting/importing the certificate. If you provide a browserWindow argument the dialog will be attached to the parent window, making it modal.

On Windows the options are more limited, due to the Win32 APIs used:

Sheets

On macOS, dialogs are presented as sheets attached to a window if you provide a BrowserWindow reference in the browserWindow parameter, or modals if no window is provided.

You can call BrowserWindow.getCurrentWindow().setSheetOffset(offset) to change the offset from the window frame where sheets are attached.

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