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  • Open source apps: update.electronjs.org
  • Hosting updates on static storage providers
  • Hosting your own update server

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  1. Advanced

Auto Update

Set up automatic updates for your Electron application

PreviousDeveloping with WSLNextDebugging

Last updated 11 months ago

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Setting up Auto Updates in your app with Electron Forge is mostly the same process . Forge enhances your workflow by publishing your app to the right place for you. There are three main ways you can do auto updates.

Note that having a application is a pre-requisite for using auto updates on macOS.

Open source apps: update.electronjs.org

Open source apps hosted on GitHub can use a free auto update service from the Electron team, . To use this module with Forge, set up the and add the module to your app.

This setup is going to be around 2 lines of code and a few lines of configuration. It is by far the easiest way to set up auto updates if you're an open source app.

Hosting updates on static storage providers

If you are using any of Forge's built-in Publishers that upload your artifacts to static storage, they each have a documentation section on how to configure your app to auto update using those uploaded artifacts. Check out each of the options:

  • Google Cloud Storage (Coming Soon)

Hosting your own update server

If you're not open source or you want slightly more control over your update service (like percentage based rollouts, or more release channels) you can host your own update server such as or . See the full list of known Electron update servers in the .

Each update server will have their own configuration for your actual app, but publishing should be done from Forge for most of them:

  • nucleus - Use the publish target

  • nuts - Use the publish target

  • electron-release-server - Use the publish target

  • hazel - Use the publish target

as described in the Electron docs
signed
GitHub Publisher
update-electron-app
nucleus
nuts
Electron's Updating Applications docs
Nucleus
GitHub
Electron Release Server
GitHub
update.electronjs.org
Amazon S3