Environment Variables

Control application configuration and behavior without changing code.

Certain Electron behaviors are controlled by environment variables because they are initialized earlier than the command line flags and the app’s code.

POSIX shell example:

$ export ELECTRON_ENABLE_LOGGING=true
$ electron

Windows console example:

> set ELECTRON_ENABLE_LOGGING=true
> electron

Production Variables

The following environment variables are intended primarily for use at runtime in packaged Electron applications.

GOOGLE_API_KEY

Electron includes a hardcoded API key for making requests to Google’s geocoding webservice. Because this API key is included in every version of Electron, it often exceeds its usage quota. To work around this, you can supply your own Google API key in the environment. Place the following code in your main process file, before opening any browser windows that will make geocoding requests:

process.env.GOOGLE_API_KEY = 'YOUR_KEY_HERE'

For instructions on how to acquire a Google API key, visit this page.

By default, a newly generated Google API key may not be allowed to make geocoding requests. To enable geocoding requests, visit this page.

ELECTRON_NO_ASAR

Disables ASAR support. This variable is only supported in forked child processes and spawned child processes that set ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE.

ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE

Starts the process as a normal Node.js process.

ELECTRON_NO_ATTACH_CONSOLE Windows

Don’t attach to the current console session.

ELECTRON_FORCE_WINDOW_MENU_BAR Linux

Don’t use the global menu bar on Linux.

Development Variables

The following environment variables are intended primarily for development and debugging purposes.

ELECTRON_ENABLE_LOGGING

Prints Chrome’s internal logging to the console.

ELECTRON_LOG_ASAR_READS

When Electron reads from an ASAR file, log the read offset and file path to the system tmpdir. The resulting file can be provided to the ASAR module to optimize file ordering.

ELECTRON_ENABLE_STACK_DUMPING

Prints the stack trace to the console when Electron crashes.

This environment variable will not work if the crashReporter is started.

ELECTRON_DEFAULT_ERROR_MODE Windows

Shows the Windows’s crash dialog when Electron crashes.

This environment variable will not work if the crashReporter is started.