Electron Development Agency — Desktop Apps with Web Tech

Electron is a framework for building desktop applications using web technologies — HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It bundles Chromium (for rendering) and Node.js (for OS access) into a single executable. Your React/TypeScript codebase runs in the Chromium renderer, while native OS features are accessed via the Node.js main process.

Choose Electron when you need offline-first functionality, local file system access, system tray integration, native OS notifications, or access to hardware (serial ports, USB). If users are always online and a browser tab is acceptable, a web app is simpler to maintain and deploy.

Electron has two process types. The main process runs in Node.js and handles OS interactions — file system, windows, native menus. The renderer process runs in Chromium and displays your React UI. They communicate via IPC (Inter-Process Communication) over typed channels.

We enable contextIsolation and disable nodeIntegration in renderer processes, expose only specific IPC handlers via a typed preload script (contextBridge), validate all IPC inputs in the main process, and use the latest Electron version to stay current with Chromium security patches.

For structured data we use SQLite via better-sqlite3 — it runs synchronously in the main process, is fast, and requires no external database server. For simple key-value storage, electron-store provides a JSON file-backed store. Large binary files go to user data directories via Node.js fs APIs.

We use electron-updater with a GitHub Releases channel. The app checks for updates on launch, downloads in the background, and prompts the user to restart when ready. We configure staged rollout percentages and delta updates to minimize download size and deployment risk.

macOS requires apps to be signed with an Apple Developer certificate and notarized by Apple's server before Gatekeeper allows installation. Windows requires Authenticode signing to avoid SmartScreen warnings. We configure CI to handle signing and notarization as part of the release build pipeline.

A minimal Electron app is 50–100MB because it bundles Chromium and Node.js. This is a known trade-off. We reduce size with ASAR packaging, excluding dev dependencies, and using electron-builder's compression settings. The user installs once; subsequent updates are smaller delta patches.

Often yes, with modifications. If your web app has no hard server dependencies and its features make sense offline, we wrap it in Electron, add local storage, configure IPC for any native features needed, and build installers for all platforms. The conversion typically takes 4–8 weeks.

We use GitHub Actions with matrix builds — macOS runners for .dmg + notarization, Windows runners for .exe signing, and Linux runners for .AppImage/.deb. Built installers are published to GitHub Releases automatically on version tags.

Tauri uses the OS webview (no bundled Chromium) and a Rust backend, producing binaries 5-10x smaller than Electron. We evaluate Tauri for projects where install size is critical. The trade-off is less API surface area and Rust knowledge required for native features.

A basic Electron wrapper of an existing web app takes 4–6 weeks including signing and auto-update. A full Electron desktop app built from scratch with local database, native OS features, and multi-platform CI takes 3–5 months. Kultrix handles the entire desktop delivery pipeline.