Electron icon
Electron icon

Electron

 112 likes

If you can build a website, you can build a desktop app. Electron is a framework for creating native applications with web technologies like JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. It takes care of the hard parts so you can focus on the core of your application.

Create menubar apps

License model

  • FreeOpen Source

Country of Origin

  • US flagUnited States

Platforms

  • Mac
  • Windows
  • Linux
3 / 5 Avg rating (8)
112likes
8comments

Features

Suggest and vote on features
  1.  Support for HTML5
  2.  Desktop Publishing
  3.  Support for Javascript
  4.  Native application

 Tags

Electron News & Activities

Highlights All activities

Recent News

Show more news

Recent activities

  • alt-search, thejfex, namdx1987 and PredatorQ liked Electron
    25 days ago
  • App icon
    CosmoMyzrailGorynych added Electron as alternative to Buntralino
    5 months ago
  • App icon
    ZorinFoss added Electron as alternative to Ribir
    6 months ago
  • App icon
    komp12321 added Electron as alternative to Kivy
    7 months ago
  • rong-billion and AuthoritativeProtocol liked Electron
    10 months ago
  • Cubium updated Electron
    11 months ago
Show all activities

Electron information

  • Developed by

    US flagOpenJS Foundation
  • Licensing

    Open Source (MIT) and Free product.
  • Written in

  • Rating

    Average rating of 3
  • Alternatives

    43 alternatives listed
  • Supported Languages

    • English

AlternativeTo Categories

DevelopmentOffice & Productivity

GitHub repository

  •  117,076 Stars
  •  16,120 Forks
  •  872 Open Issues
  •   Updated Jun 11, 2025 
View on GitHub

Popular alternatives

View all

Top Electron apps (extensions / mods etc)

View all

Our users have written 8 comments and reviews about Electron, and it has gotten 112 likes

Electron was added to AlternativeTo by Bollado on Jun 29, 2015 and this page was last updated Jul 8, 2024. Electron is sometimes referred to as Atom Shell.

Comments and Reviews

   
 Post comment/review
Top Positive Comment
Ruvenss G Wilches
Jan 16, 2016
2

Build cross platform desktop apps with web technologies

Formerly known as Atom Shell.

With Electron, creating a desktop application for your company or idea is easy. Initially developed for GitHub's Atom editor, Electron has since been used to create applications by companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Slack, Docker and Ruvenss IT Consulting Services.

Top Negative Comment
dkshsat
May 20, 2019
9

Most of the programs created with this are too memory intensive.

GT610
Jul 16, 2023
0

The worst invention ever. Chromium + NodeJS provide better cross-platform ability, but these two monsters also consume too much memory and disk space.

RemovedUser
Jul 15, 2022
1

From a developer point of view, the biggest advantage is the possibility for small teams of using established and widely known web technologies to distribute a cross-platform app without much knowledge about native platform APIs. That comes at the cost of sort of having a complete Chrome browser running for every Electron app which is anything but fast or efficient. Really slow compared to native code. And it is unrealistic to provide a user experience which is consistent with established patterns - per platform.

As a user I started trying to avoid Electron-based apps because usually their user experience is bad due to their technological overhead. Widely known chat clients lag and consume an irrational amount of memory because of using this technology, even though the do only simple things. That is a use case that worked smoother years or even decades ago with much slower and more constrained resources.

BroJenuel
May 31, 2022
-1

Electron is very easy to use, and its very easy to deploy using electron-builder.

Dr0bs
Aug 17, 2021
3

It's very hard to optimize Electron apps, because it's basically a browser. There's no point in having another browser running on your computer than spending a bit more time making a native app with Qt or some other cross-platform framework.

Steven
Apr 1, 2020
0

I started an electron course before a few days and I have to say that framework or how you wanna call that is awesome!

Show more comments
7 of 8 comments

What is Electron?

If you can build a website, you can build a desktop app. Electron is a framework for creating native applications with web technologies like JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. It takes care of the hard parts so you can focus on the core of your application.

With Electron, creating a desktop application for your company or idea is easy. Initially developed for GitHub's Atom editor, Electron has since been used to create applications by companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Slack, and Docker.

  • Electron uses Chromium and Node.js so you can build your app with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
  • Electron is an open source project maintained by GitHub and an active community of contributors.
  • Compatible with Mac, Windows, and Linux, Electron apps build and run on three platforms.

Official Links