Auto‑Updates with electron‑updater

Auto‑Updates with electron‑updater

electron‑updater (part of electron‑builder) abstracts away the platform‑specific update mechanisms (Squirrel on Windows, NSIS, macOS app‑store, etc.).

Install

npm install electron-updater

Basic usage in main.js

const { autoUpdater } = require('electron-updater');

autoUpdater.checkForUpdatesAndNotify();

autoUpdater.on('update-available', info => {
  console.log('Update available', info.version);
});
autoUpdater.on('update-downloaded', info => {
  const choice = dialog.showMessageBoxSync({
    type: 'question',
    buttons: ['Later', 'Install now'],
    defaultId: 1,
    message: `Version ${info.version} downloaded. Install now?`
  });
  if (choice === 1) autoUpdater.quitAndInstall();
});

Packaging for updates

• Use electron‑builder to create a GitHub release (or any server) that hosts the *.exe, *.dmg, *.AppImage files.
• Set the publish field in package.json:

"build": {
  "publish": [{ "provider": "github", "owner": "myuser", "repo": "my‑app" }]
}

Now each new release is automatically detected by autoUpdater.