Tips for installing Electron
To install prebuilt Electron binaries, use npm
. The preferred method is to install Electron as a development dependency in your app:
npm install electron --save-dev --save-exact
The --save-exact
flag is recommended as Electron does not follow semantic versioning. See the versioning doc for info on how to manage Electron versions in your apps.
You can also install the electron
command globally in your $PATH
:
npm install electron -g
If you want to change the architecture that is downloaded (e.g., ia32
on an x64
machine), you can use the --arch
flag with npm install or set the npm_config_arch
environment variable:
npm install --arch=ia32 electron
In addition to changing the architecture, you can also specify the platform (e.g., win32
, linux
, etc.) using the --platform
flag:
npm install --platform=win32 electron
If you need to use an HTTP proxy you can set these environment variables.
When running npm install electron
, some users occasionally encounter installation errors.
In almost all cases, these errors are the result of network problems and not actual issues with the electron
npm package. Errors like ELIFECYCLE
, EAI_AGAIN
, ECONNRESET
, and ETIMEDOUT
are all indications of such network problems. The best resolution is to try switching networks, or just wait a bit and try installing again.
You can also attempt to download Electron directly from electron/electron/releases if installing via npm
is failing.
If installation fails with an EACCESS
error you may need to fix your npm permissions.
If the above error persists, the unsafe-perm flag may need to be set to true:
sudo npm install electron --unsafe-perm=true
On slower networks, it may be advisable to use the --verbose
flag in order to show download progress:
npm install --verbose electron
If you need to force a re-download of the asset and the SHASUM file set the force_no_cache
enviroment variable to true
.