Electron (software framework)

Chromium forms the basis of a managed runtime, allowing application developers to write cross-platform applications in memory-safe JavaScript or TypeScript and target Web browser technologies including HTML, CSS, and SVG for graphics.

Electron-based applications include a "main" process and several "renderer" processes. The main process runs the logic for the application (e.g., menus, shell commands, lifecycle events), and can then launch multiple renderer processes by instantiating an instance of the BrowserWindow class, which loads a window that appears on the screen to render HTML, CSS, etc.^{[citation needed]}

Both the main and renderer processes can run with Node.js integration if the nodeIntegration field in the main process is set to true.^{[citation needed]}

Most of Electron's APIs are written in C++ or Objective-C and are exposed directly to the application code through JavaScript bindings.^[11]

In September 2021, Electron moved to an eight-week release cycle between major versions to match the release cycle of Chromium Extended Stable and to comply with a new requirement from the Microsoft Store that requires browser-based apps to be within two major versions of the latest release of the browser engine.^[12]

Electron frequently releases new major versions along every other Chromium release. The latest three stable versions are supported by the Electron team.^[13]

Desktop applications built with Electron include Atom,^[38] balenaEtcher,^[39] Discord, Slack,^[40] and Visual Studio Code.^[41][42] The Brave browser was based on Electron before it was rewritten to use Chromium directly,^[43] while Microsoft Teams used Electron before 2.0.^[44][45]

The most common criticism of Electron is that it necessitates software bloat when used for simple programs.^[46] As a result, Michael Larabel has referred to the framework as "notorious among most Linux desktop users for being resource heavy, not integrating well with most desktops, and generally being despised".^[47] Researchers have shown that Electron's large feature set can be hijacked by bad actors with write access to the source JavaScript files. This requires root access on *nix systems and is not considered to be a vulnerability by the Electron developers.^[48] Those who are concerned that Electron is not always based on the newest version of Chromium have recommended progressive web applications as an alternative.^[49]