Electron 37.0.0 has been released! It includes upgrades to Chromium 138, V8 13.8, and Node 22.16.0.

The Electron team is excited to announce the release of Electron 37.0.0! You can install it with npm via npm install electron@latest or download it from our releases website. Continue reading for details about this release.

If you have any feedback, please share it with us on Bluesky or Mastodon, or join our community Discord! Bugs and feature requests can be reported in Electron's issue tracker.

Notable Changes​

Smooth Corners: Native CSS Squircles​

Electron 37 introduces the custom -electron-corner-smoothing CSS property, which allows apps to create smoother rounded corners to match Apple's macOS design language. This feature originally landed in Electron 36, but we felt like it deserved a brighter spotlight.

Example with 100% Corner Smoothing

Code	Result
.box { width: 128px; height: 128px; border-radius: 24px; -electron-corner-smoothing: 100%; }

Unlike the standard border-radius property, which carves quarter-circle corners out of a rectangle, -electron-corner-smoothing smoothly transitions the curve into a squircle shape with a continuous perimeter.

You can adjust the smoothness using values from 0% to 100%, or use the system-ui value to match the operating system's style (60% on macOS and 0% otherwise). This design enhancement can be applied on borders, outlines, and shadows, giving your app a subtle layer of polish.

Stack Changes​

• Chromium 138.0.7204.35
  • New in 138
  • New in 137
• Node 22.16.0
  • Node 22.16.0 blog post
• V8 13.8

Electron 37 upgrades Chromium from 136.0.7103.48 to 138.0.7204.35, and V8 from 13.6 to 13.8.

Google Summer of Code Begins​

Our two Google Summer of Code contributors have started the program's coding period!

• @nilayarya is crafting a new Save/Restore Window State API in Electron core. The new APIs will provide a built-in, standardized way to handle window state persistence. See Nilay's in-progress RFC at electron/rfcs#16.
• @hitarth-gg is hard at work modernizing the long-dormant Devtron extension using Chrome Manifest V3 APIs. This project will provide tooling for developers to debug IPC communication, track event listeners, and visualize module dependencies in their Electron applications.

It has been an exciting couple of weeks for our GSOC participants, so stay tuned for more updates!

New Features and Improvements​

• Added innerWidth and innerHeight options for window.open. #47039 (Also in 35, 36)
• Added before-mouse-event to allow intercepting and preventing mouse events in webContents. #47364 (Also in 36)
• Added scriptURL property to ServiceWorkerMain. #45863
• Added sublabel functionality for menus on macOS >= 14.4. #47042 (Also in 35, 36)
• Added support for HIDDevice.collections. #47483 (Also in 36)
• Added support for --no-experimental-global-navigator flag. #47418 (Also in 35, 36)
• Added support for screen.dipToScreenPoint(point) and screen.screenToDipPoint(point) on Linux X11. #46895 (Also in 35, 36)
• Added support for menu item role palette and header on macOS. #47245
• Added support for node option --experimental-network-inspection. #47031 (Also in 35, 36)
• Exposed win.isContentProtected() to allow developers to check window protection status. #47310 (Also in 36)

Breaking Changes​

Utility Process unhandled rejection behavior change​

Utility Processes will now warn with an error message when an unhandled rejection occurs instead of crashing the process.

To restore the previous behavior, you can use:

process.on('unhandledRejection', () => {
  process.exit(1);
});

Behavior Changed: process.exit() kills utility process synchronously​

Calling process.exit() in a utility process will now kill the utility process synchronously. This brings the behavior of process.exit() in line with Node.js behavior.

Please refer to the Node.js docs and PR #45690 to understand the potential implications of that, e.g., when calling console.log() before process.exit().

Behavior Changed: WebUSB and WebSerial Blocklist Support​

WebUSB and Web Serial now support the WebUSB Blocklist and Web Serial Blocklist used by Chromium and outlined in their respective specifications.

To disable these, users can pass disable-usb-blocklist and disable-serial-blocklist as command line flags.

Removed: null value for session property in ProtocolResponse​

This deprecated feature has been removed.

Previously, setting the ProtocolResponse.session property to null would create a random independent session. This is no longer supported.

Using single-purpose sessions here is discouraged due to overhead costs; however, old code that needs to preserve this behavior can emulate it by creating a random session with session.fromPartition(some_random_string) and then using it in ProtocolResponse.session.

Behavior Changed: BrowserWindow.IsVisibleOnAllWorkspaces() on Linux​

BrowserWindow.IsVisibleOnAllWorkspaces() will now return false on Linux if the window is not currently visible.

End of Support for 34.x.y​

Electron 34.x.y has reached end-of-support as per the project's support policy. Developers and applications are encouraged to upgrade to a newer version of Electron.

What's Next​

In the short term, you can expect the team to continue to focus on keeping up with the development of the major components that make up Electron, including Chromium, Node, and V8.

You can find Electron's public timeline here.

More information about future changes can be found on the Planned Breaking Changes page.

Electron 36.0.0 has been released! It includes upgrades to Chromium 136, V8 13.6, and Node 22.14.0.

The Electron team is excited to announce the release of Electron 36.0.0! You can install it with npm via npm install electron@latest or download it from our releases website. Continue reading for details about this release.

If you have any feedback, please share it with us on Bluesky or Mastodon, or join our community Discord! Bugs and feature requests can be reported in Electron's issue tracker.

Notable Changes​

Writing Tools Support​

In Electron 36, you can enable macOS system-level features like Writing Tools (spelling and grammar), Autofill, and Services menu items in your context menus. To do so, pass a WebFrameMain instance into the frame parameter for menu.popup().

import { BrowserWindow, Menu, WebFrameMain } from 'electron';

const currentWindow = BrowserWindow.getFocusedWindow();
const focusedFrame = currentWindow.webContents.focusedFrame;
const menu = Menu.buildFromTemplate([{ label: 'Copy', role: 'copy' }]);

menu.popup({
  window: currentWindow,
  frame: focusedFrame,
});

Stack Changes​

• Chromium 136.0.7103.48
  • New in 136
  • New in 135
• Node 22.14.0
  • Node 22.14.0 blog post
• V8 13.6

Electron 36 upgrades Chromium from 134.0.6998.23 to 136.0.7103.48, and V8 from 13.5 to 13.6.

New Features and Improvements​

• Added BrowserWindow.isSnapped() to indicate whether a given window has been arranged via Snap on Windows. #46226
• Added WebContents.focusedFrame to get the focused frame.
• Fixed WebContents.opener to specify potential null type. #45667
• Added ffmpeg.dll to delay load configuration. #46173 (Also in 34, 35)
• Added nativeTheme.shouldUseDarkColorsForSystemIntegratedUI to distinguish system and app theme. #46598 (Also in 35)
• Added excludeUrls to webRequest filter and deprecated the use of empty arrays in urls property. #44692 (Also in 35)
• Added support for Autofill, Writing Tools and Services macOS level menu items in context menus via the new frame option in menu.popup. #46350
• Added support for system-context-menu on Linux. #46399
• Improved ASAR integrity checks on Windows. #46537
• Improved performance of desktopCapturer.getSources when not requesting thumbnails on macOS. #46251 (Also in 34, 35)
• Removed 240 FPS limit when using shared texture OSR. #45669 (Also in 35)

Breaking Changes​

Deprecated: NativeImage.getBitmap()​

The NativeImage.getBitmap() function is now deprecated and documented as an alias for NativeImage.toBitmap(). The two functions both return a newly-allocated copy of the bitmap and are functionally equivalent.

Deprecated: Extension methods and events on session​

session.loadExtension, session.removeExtension, session.getExtension, session.getAllExtensions, and the events extension-loaded, extension-unloaded, and extension-ready have all moved to the new Extensions object accessible via the session.extensions instance property.

Removed: quota type syncable in session.clearStorageData(options)​

When calling session.clearStorageData(options), the options.quota type syncable is no longer supported because it has been removed from upstream Chromium.

Deprecated: quota property in session.clearStorageData(options)​

When calling Session.clearStorageData(options), the options.quota property is deprecated. Since the syncable type was removed, there is only type left -- 'temporary' -- so specifying it is unnecessary.

Behavior Changed: GTK 4 is the default when running on GNOME​

After an upstream change, GTK 4 is now the default when running on GNOME.

In rare cases, this may cause some applications or configurations to error with the following message:

Gtk-ERROR **: 11:30:38.382: GTK 2/3 symbols detected. Using GTK 2/3 and GTK 4 in the same process is not supported

Affected users can work around this by specifying the gtk-version command-line flag:

$ electron --gtk-version=3   # or --gtk-version=2

The same can be done with the app.commandLine.appendSwitch function.

Behavior Changed: app.commandLine​

app.commandLine will convert uppercases switches and arguments to lowercase.

app.commandLine was only meant to handle Chromium switches (which aren't case-sensitive) and switches passed via app.commandLine will not be passed down to any of the child processes.

If you were using app.commandLine to parse app-specific command line arguments, you should do this via process.argv.

End of Support for 33.x.y​

Electron 33.x.y has reached end-of-support as per the project's support policy. Developers and applications are encouraged to upgrade to a newer version of Electron.

What's Next​

In the short term, you can expect the team to continue to focus on keeping up with the development of the major components that make up Electron, including Chromium, Node, and V8.

You can find Electron's public timeline here.

More information about future changes can be found on the Planned Breaking Changes page.

Electron 35.0.0 has been released! It includes upgrades to Chromium 134.0.6998.44, V8 13.5, and Node 22.14.0.

The Electron team is excited to announce the release of Electron 35.0.0! You can install it with npm via npm install electron@latest or download it from our releases website. Continue reading for details about this release.

If you have any feedback, please share it with us on Bluesky or Mastodon, or join our community Discord! Bugs and feature requests can be reported in Electron's issue tracker.

Notable Changes​

Service Worker Preload Scripts for Improved Extensions Support​

Originally proposed in RFC #8 by @samuelmaddock, Electron 35 adds the ability to attach a preload script to Service Workers. With Chrome's Manifest V3 Extensions routing a lot of work through extension service workers, this feature fills in a gap in Electron's support for modern Chrome extensions.

When registering a preload script programmatically at the Session level, you can now specifically apply it to Service Worker contexts with the ses.registerPreloadScript(script) API.

// Add our preload realm script to the session.
session.defaultSession.registerPreloadScript({
  // Our script should only run in service worker preload realms.
  type: 'service-worker',
  // The absolute path to the script.
  script: path.join(__dirname, 'extension-sw-preload.js'),
});

Furthermore, IPC is now available between Service Workers and their attached preload scripts via the ServiceWorkerMain.ipc class. The preload script will still use the ipcRenderer module to communicate with its Service Worker. See the original RFC for more details.

This feature was preceded by many other changes that laid the groundwork for it:

• #45329 redesigned the Session module's preload APIs to support registering and unregistering individual preload scripts.
• #45229 added the experimental contextBridge.executeInMainWorld(executionScript) script to evaluate JavaScript in the main world over the context bridge.
• #45341 added the ServiceWorkerMain class to interact with Service Workers in the main process.

Stack Changes​

• Chromium 134.0.6998.44
  • New in 134
  • New in 133
• Node 22.14.0
  • Node 22.14.0 blog post
• V8 13.5

Electron 35 upgrades Chromium from 132.0.6834.83 to 134.0.6998.44, Node from 20.18.1 to 22.14.0, and V8 from 13.2 to 13.5.

New Features​

• Added NSPrefersDisplaySafeAreaCompatibilityMode = false to Info.plist to remove "Scale to fit below built-in camera." from app options. #45357 ^{(Also in v34.1.0)}
• Added ServiceWorkerMain class to interact with service workers in the main process. #45341
  • Added running-status-changed event on ServiceWorkers to indicate when a service worker's running status has changed.
  • Added startWorkerForScope on ServiceWorkers to start a worker that may have been previously stopped.
• Added experimental contextBridge.executeInMainWorld to safely execute code across world boundaries. #45330
• Added frame to 'console-message' event. #43617
• Added query-session-end event and improved session-end events on Windows. #44598
• Added view.getVisible(). #45409
• Added webContents.navigationHistory.restore(index, entries) API that allows restoration of navigation history. #45583
• Added optional animation parameter to BrowserWindow.setVibrancy. #35987
• Added permission support for document.executeCommand("paste"). #45471 ^{(Also in v34.1.0)}
• Added support for roundedCorners BrowserWindow constructor option on Windows. #45740 ^{(Also in v34.3.0)}
• Added support for service worker preload scripts. #45408
• Support Portal's globalShortcuts. Electron must be run with --enable-features=GlobalShortcutsPortal in order to have the feature working. #45297

Breaking Changes​

Removed: isDefault and status properties on PrinterInfo​

These properties have been removed from the PrinterInfo object because they have been removed from upstream Chromium.

Deprecated: getFromVersionID on session.serviceWorkers​

The session.serviceWorkers.fromVersionID(versionId) API has been deprecated in favor of session.serviceWorkers.getInfoFromVersionID(versionId). This was changed to make it more clear which object is returned with the introduction of the session.serviceWorkers.getWorkerFromVersionID(versionId) API.

// Deprecated
session.serviceWorkers.fromVersionID(versionId);

// Replace with
session.serviceWorkers.getInfoFromVersionID(versionId);

Deprecated: setPreloads, getPreloads on Session​

registerPreloadScript, unregisterPreloadScript, and getPreloadScripts are introduced as a replacement for the deprecated methods. These new APIs allow third-party libraries to register preload scripts without replacing existing scripts. Also, the new type option allows for additional preload targets beyond frame.

// Deprecated
session.setPreloads([path.join(__dirname, 'preload.js')]);

// Replace with:
session.registerPreloadScript({
  type: 'frame',
  id: 'app-preload',
  filePath: path.join(__dirname, 'preload.js'),
});

Deprecated: level, message, line, and sourceId arguments in console-message event on WebContents​

The console-message event on WebContents has been updated to provide details on the Event argument.

// Deprecated
webContents.on(
  'console-message',
  (event, level, message, line, sourceId) => {},
);

// Replace with:
webContents.on(
  'console-message',
  ({ level, message, lineNumber, sourceId, frame }) => {},
);

Additionally, level is now a string with possible values of info, warning, error, and debug.

Behavior Changed: urls property of WebRequestFilter.​

Previously, an empty urls array was interpreted as including all URLs. To explicitly include all URLs, developers should now use the <all_urls> pattern, which is a designated URL pattern that matches every possible URL. This change clarifies the intent and ensures more predictable behavior.

// Deprecated
const deprecatedFilter = {
  urls: [],
};

// Replace with
const newFilter = {
  urls: ['<all_urls>'],
};

Deprecated: systemPreferences.isAeroGlassEnabled()​

The systemPreferences.isAeroGlassEnabled() function has been deprecated without replacement. It has been always returning true since Electron 23, which only supports Windows 10+, where DWM composition can no longer be disabled.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/dwm/composition-ovw#disabling-dwm-composition-windows7-and-earlier

End of Support for 32.x.y​

Electron 32.x.y has reached end-of-support as per the project's support policy. Developers and applications are encouraged to upgrade to a newer version of Electron.

What's Next​

In the short term, you can expect the team to continue to focus on keeping up with the development of the major components that make up Electron, including Chromium, Node, and V8.

You can find Electron's public timeline here.

More information about future changes can be found on the Planned Breaking Changes page.

Electron has once again been accepted as a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2025! Google Summer of Code is a global program focused on bringing new contributors into open source software development.

For more details about the program, visit Google’s Summer of Code homepage.

About us​

Electron is a JavaScript framework for building cross-platform desktop applications using web technologies. The core Electron framework is a compiled binary executable built with Chromium and Node.js, and is mostly written in C++.

Outside of the Electron core repository, we also maintain several projects to support the Electron ecosystem, including:

• Tools for end-user distribution (e.g. Electron Forge and update.electronjs.org).
• Learning materials for Electron developers (e.g. electronjs.org and Electron Fiddle).
• Internal tools to enhance developer productivity (e.g. Electron Build Tools and Sheriff).

As a GSoC contributor, you will have the opportunity to collaborate with some of Electron’s core contributors on one of many projects under the github.com/electron umbrella.

Before applying​

If you aren’t very familiar with Electron, we would recommend you start by reading the documentation and trying out some of the examples in Electron Fiddle.

To learn more about distributing Electron apps, try creating a sample application with Electron Forge:

npm init electron-app@latest my-app

After familiarizing yourself with the code a bit, come join the conversation on the Electron Discord server.

Project contributions​

We encourage you to take a look at any repositories that are relevant to the project ideas you are interested in. One way of doing your research is to make contributions by reporting bugs, triaging existing issues, or submitting pull requests. Doing so is an effective way of getting hands-on practice with our codebases, but is not mandatory for proposal submissions. A well-crafted proposal should be able to demonstrate your understanding of the code without needing to refer to past contributions.

Here are a few tips if you are looking to contribute to Electron before submitting your proposal:

1. Please provide descriptive issue or PR descriptions when submitting contributions. Regardless of the code itself, putting effort into the written part of a contribution shows us that you can be an effective communicator in a collaborative environment.
2. PRs are always welcome for open issues. You do not need to comment on an issue asking a maintainer if you can be assigned to it. Note that we still encourage you to discuss potential solutions on an issue if you need to refine an idea for a solution, but comments strictly asking if you can work on something are redundant and add noise to the issue tracker.
3. Low-effort project contributions (e.g. invalid issue reports, trivial wording changes in a repo README, or minor stylistic changes to front-end code) will negatively impact your final proposal, as they take up limited maintainer time and do not provide any net benefit to the Electron project.
4. While AI coding assistants can be an effective tool for debugging and understanding new concepts, we highly discourage contributions that are copy/pasted directly from AI-generated output. These often turn out to be of low quality, and it's often more effort for maintainers to clean up code generated from an LLM than for us to just reject a PR altogether.

Crafting your proposal​

Interested in collaborating with Electron? First, check out the seven project idea drafts we have prepared. All listed ideas are open for proposals.

If you have a unique idea not on the list, we are open to considering it, but ensure your proposal is detailed and thoroughly outlined. When in doubt, we recommend sticking with our listed ideas.

Your application should include:

• A detailed proposal outlining what you plan to achieve over the summer.
• Your background as a developer. If you have a resume, please include a copy. Otherwise, tell us about your past technical experience.
  • Lack of experience in certain areas won’t disqualify you, but it will help our mentors work out a plan to best support you and make sure your summer project is successful.

A detailed guide of what to submit as part of your Electron application is here. Submit proposals directly to the Google Summer of Code portal. Proposals emailed to the Electron team will not be considered as final submissions.

For more guidance on your proposal, we recommend you follow the official Google Summer of Code proposal writing advice here.

Applications open on March 24th, 2025 and close on April 8th, 2025.

Questions?​

If you have questions we didn’t address in this blog post or inquiries about your proposal draft, please send us an email at summer-of-code@electronjs.org or check the GSoC FAQ. Please read our contributor guidance before emailing.

Resources​

• Electron Google Summer of Code 2025 Ideas List
• Electron Google Summer of Code 2025 Contributor Guidance
• Google Summer of Code Student/Contributor Guide

Electron 34.0.0 has been released! It includes upgrades to Chromium 132.0.6834.83, V8 13.2, and Node 20.18.1.

The Electron team is excited to announce the release of Electron 34.0.0! You can install it with npm via npm install electron@latest or download it from our releases website. Continue reading for details about this release.

If you have any feedback, please share it with us on Bluesky or Mastodon, or join our community Discord! Bugs and feature requests can be reported in Electron's issue tracker.

Notable Changes​

HTTP Compression Shared Dictionary Management APIs​

HTTP compression allows data to be compressed by a web server before being received by the browser. Modern versions of Chromium support Brotli and Zstandard, which are newer compression algorithms that perform better for text files than older schemes such as gzip.

Custom shared dictionaries further improve the efficiency of Brotli and Zstandard compression. See the Chrome for Developers blog on shared dictionaries for more information.

@felixrieseberg added the following APIs in #44950 to manage shared dictionaries at the Session level:

• session.getSharedDictionaryUsageInfo()
• session.getSharedDictionaryInfo(options)
• session.clearSharedDictionaryCache()
• session.clearSharedDictionaryCacheForIsolationKey(options)

Unresponsive Renderer JavaScript Call Stacks​

Electron's unresponsive event occurs whenever a renderer process hangs for an excessive period of time. The new WebFrameMain.collectJavaScriptCallStack() API added by @samuelmaddock in #44204 allows you to collect the JavaScript call stack from the associated WebFrameMain object (webContnets.mainFrame).

This API can be useful to determine why the frame is unresponsive in cases where there's long-running JavaScript events causing the process to hang. For more information, see the proposed web standard Crash Reporting API.

const { app } = require('electron');

app.commandLine.appendSwitch(
  'enable-features',
  'DocumentPolicyIncludeJSCallStacksInCrashReports',
);

app.on('web-contents-created', (_, webContents) => {
  webContents.on('unresponsive', async () => {
    // Interrupt execution and collect call stack from unresponsive renderer
    const callStack = await webContents.mainFrame.collectJavaScriptCallStack();
    console.log('Renderer unresponsive\n', callStack);
  });
});

Stack Changes​

• Chromium 132.0.6834.83
  • New in 131
  • New in 132
• Node 20.18.1
  • Node 20.18.1 blog post
• V8 13.2

Electron 34 upgrades Chromium from 130.0.6723.44 to 132.0.6834.83, Node from 20.18.0 to 20.18.1, and V8 from 13.0 to 13.2.

New Features​

• Added APIs to manage shared dictionaries for compression efficiency using Brotli or ZStandard. The new APIs are session.getSharedDictionaryUsageInfo(), session.getSharedDictionaryInfo(options), session.clearSharedDictionaryCache(), and session.clearSharedDictionaryCacheForIsolationKey(options). #44950
• Added WebFrameMain.collectJavaScriptCallStack() for accessing the JavaScript call stack of unresponsive renderers. #44938
• Added WebFrameMain.detached for frames in an unloading state.
  • Added WebFrameMain.isDestroyed() to determine if a frame has been destroyed.
  • Fixed webFrameMain.fromId(processId, frameId) returning a WebFrameMain instance which doesn't match the given parameters when the frame is unloading. #43473
• Added error event in utility process to support diagnostic reports on V8 fatal errors. #43774
• Feat: GPU accelerated shared texture offscreen rendering. #42953

Breaking Changes​

Behavior Changed: menu bar will be hidden during fullscreen on Windows​

This brings the behavior to parity with Linux. Prior behavior: Menu bar is still visible during fullscreen on Windows. New behavior: Menu bar is hidden during fullscreen on Windows.

Correction: This was previously listed as a breaking change in Electron 33, but was first released in Electron 34.

End of Support for 31.x.y​

Electron 31.x.y has reached end-of-support as per the project's support policy. Developers and applications are encouraged to upgrade to a newer version of Electron.

What's Next​

In the short term, you can expect the team to continue to focus on keeping up with the development of the major components that make up Electron, including Chromium, Node, and V8.

You can find Electron's public timeline here.

More information about future changes can be found on the Planned Breaking Changes page.

In early 2025, Electron’s npm ecosystem repos (under the @electron/ and @electron-forge/ namespaces) will move to Node.js 22 as the minimum supported version.

What does this mean?​

In the past, packages in Electron’s npm ecosystem (Forge, Packager, etc) have supported Node versions for as long as possible, even after a version has reached its End-Of-Life (EOL) date. This is done to make sure we don’t fragment the ecosystem—we understand that many projects depend on older versions of Node, and we don’t want to risk stranding those projects unless there was a pressing reason to upgrade.

Over time, using Node.js 14 as our minimum version has become increasingly difficult for a few reasons:

• Lack of official Node.js 14 macOS ARM64 builds requires us to maintain CI infrastructure workarounds to provide full test coverage.
• engines requirements for upstream package dependencies have moved forward, making it increasingly difficult to resolve supply chain security issues with dependency bumps.

Additionally, newer versions of Node.js have included many improvements that we would like to leverage, such as runtime-native common utilities (e.g. fs.glob and util.parseArgs) and entire new batteries-included modules (e.g. node:test, node:sqlite).

Why upgrade now?​

In July 2024, Electron’s Ecosystem Working Group decided to upgrade all packages to the earliest Node version where require()of synchronous ESM graphs will be supported (see nodejs/node#51977 and nodejs/node#53500) at a future point after that version reaches its LTS date.

We’ve decided to set that update time to January/February 2025. After this upgrade occurs, Node 22 will be the minimum supported version in existing ecosystem packages.

What action do I need to take?​

We’ll strive to maintain compatibility as much as possible. However, to ensure the best support, we encourage you to upgrade your apps to Node 22 or higher.

Note that the Node version running in your project is unrelated to the Node version embedded into your current version of Electron.

What's next​

Please feel free to write to us at info@electronjs.org if you have any questions or concerns. You can also find community support in our official Electron Discord.

The Electron project will pause for the month of December 2024, then return to full speed in January 2025.

via GIPHY

What will be the same in December​

1. Zero-day and other major security-related releases will be published as necessary. Security incidents should be reported via SECURITY.md.
2. Code of Conduct reports and moderation will continue.

What will be different in December​

1. 2024's last stable branch releases for the year, which include Electron 31, 32, and 33, will occur the week of December 1st. There will be no additional planned releases in December.
2. No Nightly and Alpha releases for the last two weeks of December.
3. With few exceptions, no pull request reviews or merges.
4. No issue tracker updates on any repositories.
5. No Discord debugging help from maintainers.
6. No social media content updates.

See you all in 2025!

BrowserView has been deprecated since Electron 30 and is replaced by WebContentView. Thankfully, migrating is fairly painless.

Electron is moving from BrowserView to WebContentsView to align with Chromium’s UI framework, the Views API. WebContentsView offers a reusable view directly tied to Chromium’s rendering pipeline, simplifying future upgrades and opening up the possibility for developers to integrate non-web UI elements to their Electron apps. By adopting WebContentsView, applications are not only prepared for upcoming updates but also benefit from reduced code complexity and fewer potential bugs in the long run.

Developers familiar with BrowserWindows and BrowserViews should note that BrowserWindow and WebContentsView are subclasses inheriting from the BaseWindow and View base classes, respectively. To fully understand the available instance variables and methods, be sure to consult the documentation for these base classes.

Migration steps​

1. Upgrade Electron to 30.0.0 or higher​

2. Familiarize yourself with where your application uses BrowserViews​

One way to do this is to search your codebase for new BrowserView(. This should give you a sense for how your application is using BrowserViews and how many call sites need to be migrated.

3. Migrate each usage of BrowserView​

1. Migrate the instantiation. This should be fairly straightforward because WebContentsView and BrowserView’s constructors have essentially the same shape. Both accept WebPreferences via the webPreferences param.

   - this.tabBar = new BrowserView({
   + this.tabBar = new WebContentsView({
   

   info

   By default, WebContentsView instantiates with a white background, while BrowserView instantiates with a transparent background. To get a transparent background in WebContentsView, set its background color to an RGBA hex value with an alpha (opaqueness) channel set to 00:

   + this.webContentsView.setBackgroundColor("#00000000");
   

2. Migrate where the BrowserView gets added to its parent window.

   - this.browserWindow.addBrowserView(this.tabBar)
   + this.browserWindow.contentView.addChildView(this.tabBar);
   

3. Migrate BrowserView instance method calls on the parent window.

   Old Method	New Method	Notes
   win.setBrowserView	win.contentView.removeChildView + win.contentView.addChildView
   win.getBrowserView	win.contentView.children
   win.removeBrowserView	win.contentView.removeChildView
   win.setTopBrowserView	win.contentView.addChildView	Calling addChildView on an existing view reorders it to the top.
   win.getBrowserViews	win.contentView.children

4. Migrate the setAutoResize instance method to a resize listener.

   - this.browserView.setAutoResize({
   -   vertical: true,
   - })
   
   + this.browserWindow.on('resize', () => {
   +   if (!this.browserWindow || !this.webContentsView) {
   +     return;
   +   }
   +   const bounds = this.browserWindow.getBounds();
   +   this.webContentsView.setBounds({
   +     x: 0,
   +     y: 0,
   +     width: bounds.width,
   +     height: bounds.height,
   +    });
   +  });
   

   tip

   All existing usage of browserView.webContents and instance methods browserView.setBounds, browserView.getBounds , and browserView.setBackgroundColor do not need to be migrated and should work with a WebContentsView instance out of the box!

4. Test and commit your changes​

Running into issues? Check the WebContentsView tag on Electron's issue tracker to see if the issue you're encountering has been reported. If you don't see your issue there, feel free to add a new bug report. Including testcase gists will help us better triage your issue!

Congrats, you’ve migrated onto WebContentsViews! 🎉

Electron 33.0.0 has been released! It includes upgrades to Chromium 130.0.6723.44, V8 13.0, and Node 20.18.0.

The Electron team is excited to announce the release of Electron 33.0.0! You can install it with npm via npm install electron@latest or download it from our releases website. Continue reading for details about this release.

If you have any feedback, please share it with us on Twitter or Mastodon, or join our community Discord! Bugs and feature requests can be reported in Electron's issue tracker.

Notable Changes​

Highlights​

• Added a handler, app.setClientCertRequestPasswordHandler(handler), to help unlock cryptographic devices when a PIN is needed. #41205
• Extended navigationHistory API with 2 new functions for better history management. #42014
• Improved native theme transparency checking. #42862

Stack Changes​

• Chromium 130.0.6723.44
  • New in 130
  • New in 129
• Node 20.18.0
  • Node 20.18.0 blog post
  • Node 20.17.0 blog post
• V8 13.0

Electron 33 upgrades Chromium from 128.0.6613.36 to 130.0.6723.44, Node from 20.16.0 to 20.18.0, and V8 from 12.8 to 13.0.

New Features​

• Added a handler, app.setClientCertRequestPasswordHandler(handler), to help unlock cryptographic devices when a PIN is needed. #41205
• Added error event in utility process to support diagnostic reports on V8 fatal errors. #43997
• Added View.setBorderRadius(radius) for customizing the border radius of views—with compatibility for WebContentsView. #42320
• Extended navigationHistory API with 2 new functions for better history management. #42014

Breaking Changes​

Removed: macOS 10.15 support​

macOS 10.15 (Catalina) is no longer supported by Chromium.

Older versions of Electron will continue to run on Catalina, but macOS 11 (Big Sur) or later will be required to run Electron v33.0.0 and higher.

Behavior Changed: Native modules now require C++20​

Due to changes made upstream, both V8 and Node.js now require C++20 as a minimum version. Developers using native node modules should build their modules with --std=c++20 rather than --std=c++17. Images using gcc9 or lower may need to update to gcc10 in order to compile. See #43555 for more details.

Behavior Changed: custom protocol URL handling on Windows​

Due to changes made in Chromium to support Non-Special Scheme URLs, custom protocol URLs that use Windows file paths will no longer work correctly with the deprecated protocol.registerFileProtocol and the baseURLForDataURL property on BrowserWindow.loadURL, WebContents.loadURL, and <webview>.loadURL. protocol.handle will also not work with these types of URLs but this is not a change since it has always worked that way.

// No longer works
protocol.registerFileProtocol('other', () => {
  callback({ filePath: '/path/to/my/file' });
});

const mainWindow = new BrowserWindow();
mainWindow.loadURL(
  'data:text/html,<script src="loaded-from-dataurl.js"></script>',
  { baseURLForDataURL: 'other://C:\\myapp' },
);
mainWindow.loadURL('other://C:\\myapp\\index.html');

// Replace with
const path = require('node:path');
const nodeUrl = require('node:url');
protocol.handle(other, (req) => {
  const srcPath = 'C:\\myapp\\';
  const reqURL = new URL(req.url);
  return net.fetch(
    nodeUrl.pathToFileURL(path.join(srcPath, reqURL.pathname)).toString(),
  );
});

mainWindow.loadURL(
  'data:text/html,<script src="loaded-from-dataurl.js"></script>',
  { baseURLForDataURL: 'other://' },
);
mainWindow.loadURL('other://index.html');

Behavior Changed: webContents property on login on app​

The webContents property in the login event from app will be null when the event is triggered for requests from the utility process created with respondToAuthRequestsFromMainProcess option.

Deprecated: textured option in BrowserWindowConstructorOption.type​

The textured option of type in BrowserWindowConstructorOptions has been deprecated with no replacement. This option relied on the NSWindowStyleMaskTexturedBackground style mask on macOS, which has been deprecated with no alternative.

Deprecated: systemPreferences.accessibilityDisplayShouldReduceTransparency​

The systemPreferences.accessibilityDisplayShouldReduceTransparency property is now deprecated in favor of the new nativeTheme.prefersReducedTransparency, which provides identical information and works cross-platform.

// Deprecated
const shouldReduceTransparency =
  systemPreferences.accessibilityDisplayShouldReduceTransparency;

// Replace with:
const prefersReducedTransparency = nativeTheme.prefersReducedTransparency;

End of Support for 30.x.y​

Electron 30.x.y has reached end-of-support as per the project's support policy. Developers and applications are encouraged to upgrade to a newer version of Electron.

What's Next​

In the short term, you can expect the team to continue to focus on keeping up with the development of the major components that make up Electron, including Chromium, Node, and V8.

You can find Electron's public timeline here.

More information about future changes can be found on the Planned Breaking Changes page.

Historical changes to Electron APIs will now be detailed in the docs.

Hi 👋, I'm Peter, the 2024 Google Summer of Code (GSoC) contributor to Electron.

Over the course of the GSoC program, I implemented an API history feature for the Electron documentation and its functions, classes, etc. in a similar fashion to the Node.js documentation: by allowing the use of a simple but powerful YAML schema in the API documentation Markdown files and displaying it nicely on the Electron documentation website.