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Easier AutoUpdating for Open-Source Apps

· 3 min read
zeke
zeke

Today we're releasing a free, open-source, hosted updates webservice and companion npm package to enable easy automatic updates for open-source Electron apps. This is a step toward empowering app developers to think less about deployment and more about developing high-quality experiences for their users.

The new updater module in action

Making life easier​

Electron has an autoUpdater API that gives apps the ability to consume metadata from a remote endpoint to check for updates, download them in the background, and install them automatically.

Enabling these updates has been a cumbersome step in the deployment process for many Electron app developers because it requires a web server to be deployed and maintained just to serve app version history metadata.

Today we are announcing a new drop-in solution for automatic app updates. If your Electron app is in a public GitHub repository and you're using GitHub Releases to publish builds, you can use this service to deliver continuous app updates to your users.

Using the new module​

To minimize configuration on your part, we've created update-electron-app, an npm module which integrates with the new update.electronjs.org webservice.

Install the module:

npm install update-electron-app

Call it from anywhere in your app's main process:

require('update-electron-app')();

That's it! The module will check for updates at app startup, then every ten minutes. When an update is found it will download automatically in the background, and a dialog will be displayed when the update is ready.

Migrating existing apps​

Apps already using Electron's autoUpdater API can use this service too. To do so, you can customize the update-electron-app module or integrate directly with update.electronjs.org.

Alternatives​

If you're using electron-builder to package your app, you can use its built-in updater. For details, see electron.build/auto-update.

If your app is private, you may need to run your own update server. There are a number of open-source tools for this, including Zeit's Hazel and Atlassian's Nucleus. See the Deploying an Update Server tutorial for more info.

Thanks​

Thanks to Julian Gruber for helping design and build this simple and scalable web service. Thanks to the folks at Zeit for their open-source Hazel service, from which we drew design inspiration. Thanks to Samuel Attard for the code reviews. Thanks to the Electron community for helping test this service.

🌲 Here's to an evergreen future for Electron apps!