Distributing Apps With Electron Forge | Electron Skip to main content Electron Docs API Blog Tools * Electron Forge * Electron Fiddle Community * Governance * Showcase * Resources Releases English * English * Deutsch * Español * Français * 日本語 * Português * Русский * 中文 Search * Get Started * Processes in Electron * Best Practices * Examples * Development * Native Node Modules * Distribution * Distributing Apps With Electron Forge * Advanced Reference * Testing And Debugging * References * Contributing * * Distribution * Distributing Apps With Electron Forge On this page Distributing Apps With Electron Forge Electron Forge is a tool for packaging and publishing Electron applications. It unifies Electron's build tooling ecosystem into a single extensible interface so that anyone can jump right into making Electron apps. Alternative tooling If you do not want to use Electron Forge for your project, there are other third-party tools you can use to distribute your app. These tools are maintained by members of the Electron community, and do not come with official support from the Electron project. Electron Builder A "complete solution to package and build a ready-for-distribution Electron app" that focuses on an integrated experience. electron-builder adds a single dependency and manages all further requirements internally. electron-builder replaces features and modules used by the Electron maintainers (such as the auto-updater) with custom ones. Hydraulic Conveyor A desktop app deployment tool that supports cross-building/signing of all packages from any OS without the need for multi-platform CI, can do synchronous web-style updates on each start of the app, requires no code changes, can use plain HTTP servers for updates and which focuses on ease of use. Conveyor replaces the Electron auto-updaters with Sparkle on macOS, MSIX on Windows, and Linux package repositories. Conveyor is a commercial tool that is free for open source projects. There's an example of how to package GitHub Desktop which can be used for learning. Getting started ​ The Electron Forge docs contain detailed information on taking your application from source code to your end users' machines. This includes: * Packaging your application (package) * Generating executables and installers for each OS (make) , and, * Publishing these files to online platforms to download (publish) . For beginners, we recommend following through Electron's tutorial to develop, build, package and publish your first Electron app. If you have already developed an app on your machine and want to start on packaging and distribution, start from step 5 of the tutorial. Getting help ​ * If you need help with developing your app, our community Discord server is a great place to get advice from other Electron app developers. * If you suspect you're running into a bug with Forge, please check the GitHub issue tracker to see if any existing issues match your problem. If not, feel free to fill out our bug report template and submit a new issue. Edit this page Previous Native Code and Electron: C++ (Linux) Next Distribution Overview * Getting started * Getting help Docs * Getting Started * API Reference Checklists * Performance * Security Tools * Electron Forge * Electron Fiddle Community * Governance * Resources * Bluesky * X * Mastodon * Stack Overflow More * GitHub * Open Collective * Infrastructure Dashboard Copyright OpenJS Foundation and Electron contributors. All rights reserved. The OpenJS Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of the OpenJS Foundation , please see our Trademark Policy and Trademark List . Trademarks and logos not indicated on the list of OpenJS Foundation trademarks are trademarks™ or registered® trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them. The OpenJS Foundation | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Bylaws | Code of Conduct | Trademark Policy | Trademark List | Cookie Policy Hosting and infrastructure graciously provided by