Electron for Desktop Applications: Electron powers VS Code, Slack, Discord, and Figma — one React/Vue/Svelte codebase ships Windows.exe, macOS.dmg, and Linux.AppImage via electron-builder with auto-updater, file system access, and IPC menus.
Electron enables building cross-platform desktop applications using web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript/TypeScript). A single codebase produces native apps for Windows, macOS, and Linux. VS Code, Slack, Discord, Figma, and Notion are all built with Electron. It provides full...
ZTABS builds desktop applications with Electron — delivering production-grade solutions backed by 500+ projects and 10+ years of experience. Electron enables building cross-platform desktop applications using web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript/TypeScript). A single codebase produces native apps for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Get a free consultation →
500+
Projects Delivered
4.9/5
Client Rating
10+
Years Experience
Electron is a proven choice for desktop applications. Our team has delivered hundreds of desktop applications projects with Electron, and the results speak for themselves.
Electron enables building cross-platform desktop applications using web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript/TypeScript). A single codebase produces native apps for Windows, macOS, and Linux. VS Code, Slack, Discord, Figma, and Notion are all built with Electron. It provides full OS access — file system, native menus, system tray, notifications, and keyboard shortcuts — while leveraging the vast web development ecosystem. For teams with web expertise that need to ship desktop applications, Electron is the fastest path to production.
Your React/Vue/Angular team builds desktop applications without learning platform-specific languages. Same tools, same skills, new platform.
One codebase produces native installers for Windows (.exe/.msi), macOS (.dmg), and Linux (.AppImage/.deb). Build once, ship everywhere.
Access the file system, native menus, system tray, notifications, clipboard, and keyboard shortcuts. Desktop apps feel native, not like wrapped websites.
Built-in auto-updater delivers new versions to users without manual downloads. Push fixes and features like a web app.
Building desktop applications with Electron?
Our team has delivered hundreds of Electron projects. Talk to a senior engineer today.
Schedule a CallUse context isolation and preload scripts for security. Never expose Node.js APIs directly to the renderer process. The preload script bridges them safely.
Electron has become the go-to choice for desktop applications because it balances developer productivity with production performance. The ecosystem maturity means fewer custom solutions and faster time-to-market.
| Layer | Tool |
|---|---|
| Runtime | Electron |
| Frontend | React / Vue / Svelte |
| Build | electron-builder / electron-forge |
| IPC | Electron IPC (main/renderer) |
| Storage | electron-store / SQLite |
| Updates | electron-updater |
An Electron application has two processes — the main process (Node.js, handles OS interactions) and the renderer process (Chromium, handles UI). The main process manages windows, menus, file system access, and system tray. The renderer process runs your web application (React, Vue, or any web framework).
IPC (Inter-Process Communication) connects them — the renderer requests file access, the main process performs the operation and returns results. electron-builder creates platform-specific installers with code signing for macOS notarization and Windows SmartScreen. electron-store persists settings locally.
SQLite provides local database functionality. The auto-updater checks for new versions on startup and downloads/installs updates in the background.
| Alternative | Best For | Cost Signal | Biggest Gotcha |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electron | Web teams shipping cross-platform desktop apps fast with full OS integration | Free OSS; code-signing certs ~$100-500/yr per platform | Baseline memory footprint is 150-300MB per window because Chromium ships with the app — painful on low-end hardware. |
| Tauri | Teams prioritizing small binary size and native OS WebViews | Free OSS; sub-10MB installers typical | Relies on the OS WebView (WebKit on macOS, WebView2 on Windows), so rendering parity is not guaranteed across platforms. |
| Flutter Desktop | Teams already on Flutter who want native-rendered desktop UIs | Free OSS | Desktop plugin ecosystem is smaller; advanced menus, tray, and shell integrations still require platform channels. |
| Qt / native per platform | Professional creative tools (Adobe, JetBrains) that need pixel-level control | Qt Commercial from $459/mo/dev; native tooling varies | Far larger engineering investment — typically 2-3x the cost of an Electron build for equivalent feature set. |
Shipping a cross-platform desktop app (Windows, macOS, Linux) in Electron typically costs $80-150K versus $250-500K for three native teams (Qt, Cocoa, Win32/WPF). The $150-350K savings funds the entire first year of code signing, auto-update infrastructure (electron-updater + S3 or a service like Electron Forge Hub), and a dedicated ops engineer. Because 80-95% of the code is shared with an existing web product, new features ship to all three desktop platforms and the browser from the same pull request. Most teams hit break-even by the first paid release and keep saving 3-5 engineer-months per year on every subsequent feature cycle.
Legacy Electron tutorials show nodeIntegration: true, exposing require to remote content and creating trivial RCE vectors; always use contextIsolation with a typed preload bridge exposing only the specific IPC channels you need.
Apple hard-rejects binaries lacking hardened runtime and notarization; budget 2-3 days for first-time Developer ID provisioning, notarytool integration, and entitlements plist tuning before the launch date.
Our senior Electron engineers have delivered 500+ projects. Get a free consultation with a technical architect.