Now let’s look at how developers are putting this fancy framework to use on the desktop.īelow is a list of 23 Electron apps I think are top-tier tools perfect whatever your platform of preference is. We have recapped what Electron is, what it does, and why people like (or don’t like) it.

After all, most of us won’t run 23 Electron apps all at once, just 1 or 2.Īnd so long as your laptop or desktop isn’t an antique, it should be able to cope with running a couple of Electron applications, so don’t be put off! 23 Best Electron Apps This is where the bloat comes from as Chromium isn’t renowned for its resource consumption, even when left to run in the background, out of focus.Įlectron fans (like me) argue that the benefits, features and utility provided by this class of app outweighs any claims of excess resource usage or lazy coding. Every app comes with the entire runtimeĮach Electron app runs its own, separate instance of Chromium.Large community of developers and usersĭownsides to using Electron to build applications include:.Various OS integrations, including tray applets, media keys, etc.Low barrier to entry - devs with web skills can reuse them.It allows devs to focus on creating great apps with a great design that work great on all platforms.īenefits of using Electron to build desktop applications include: Put simply, Electron handles the difficult stuff. It’s a shortcut. Electron uses a Node.js runtime for the back-end part and Chromium for the front-end. Not familiar with Electron? Allow me to introduce you.Įlectron is an open source framework that lets developers build pseudo-native applications using familiar web technologies (JavaScript, HTML, CSS). Hence this post I figured spotlighting the best Electron applications available for Linux (and other operating systems) could be interesting to others. Not everyone is appreciative of Electron’s cross-platform versatility so I once wrote an opinion piece explaining why Electron apps aren’t evil. Common issues with Electron apps include the amount of memory, CPU, and disk space they can require to run.īut not everyone is against them plenty of folks (myself included) are fine with running the occasional Electron app here or there should plug a gap or fulfil a feature we need.

We’ve featured a diverse range of Electron apps on this blog over the past few years, ranging from USB image writers to desktop podcast clients to popular IDEs. In this post we list the best Electron applications available for Ubuntu, Linux Mint, macOS and Windows.

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