How To Update an Electron App Automatically

The autoUpdater enables an electron app to check the latest version and update itself automatically. ¹

Installation

You can install autoUpdater via NPM or yarn:

npm install --save—dev electron-updater

or

yarn add electron-updater

Example

In main .js file of electron, autoUpdater can be defined as follows:

// main.js
const { autoUpdater } = require("electron-updater");

autoUpdater.setFeedURL({
    provider: "github",
    host: "github.com",
    owner: "{ username }",
    repo: "{ repository }",
    token: "{ token }",
});

Events

• checking-for-update Emit when checking update has started.
• update-available Emit when there is an available update. If autoDownload = true, the update will be downloaded automatically. The event contains the version, releaseDate, releaseNotes, etc.
• update-not-available Emit when there is no available update.
• error Emit when there is an error.
• download-progress Emit when downloading update has started. The event contains the download percentages.
• update-downloaded Emit when the update has been downloaded. The event contains the version, releaseDate, releaseNotes, downloadFile, etc.

Properties

• autoDownload autoDownload defines whether to automatically download an update when it is found. If autoDownload = false, you should manually execute autoUpdater.downloadUpdate() after receiving update-available event.
• autoInstallOnAppQuit autoInstallOnAppQuit defines whether to automatically install a downloaded update on app quit. If autoInstallOnAppQuit = false, you should manually execute autoUpdater.quitAndInstall().

Methods

• setFeedURL(options) Configure update provider. If you use GitHub as provider, options consists of provider, host, owner, repo, token, etc.
• checkForUpdatesAndNotify() Ask the server whether there is an update.
• downloadUpdate() Start downloading update.
• quitAndInstall() Restart the app and install the update after it has been downloaded. This method should be called after update-downloaded has been emitted.

1. https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/api/auto-updater ↩