Installation

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.

Global Installation

You can also install the electron command globally in your $PATH:

npm install electron -g

Customization

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

Proxies

If you need to use an HTTP proxy you can set these environment variables.

Troubleshooting

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.