Electron DevTools Installer

This is an easy way to install DevTool extensions into Electron. You shouldn't have to mess around with downloading the extension, finding the right folder and then configuring the path for everyone's machines.

Install

npm install electron-devtools-installer --save-dev

or

yarn add electron-devtools-installer -D

Usage

All you have to do now is this in the main process of your application.

import { installExtension, REDUX_DEVTOOLS } from 'electron-devtools-installer';
// Or if you can not use ES6 imports
/**
const { default: installExtension, REACT_DEVELOPER_TOOLS } = require('electron-devtools-installer');
*/
const { app } = require('electron');

app.whenReady().then(() => {
    installExtension(REDUX_DEVTOOLS)
        .then((ext) => console.log(`Added Extension:  ${ext.name}`))
        .catch((err) => console.log('An error occurred: ', err));
});

To install multiple extensions, installExtension takes an array.

app.whenReady().then(() => {
    installExtension([REDUX_DEVTOOLS, REACT_DEVELOPER_TOOLS])
        .then(([redux, react]) => console.log(`Added Extensions:  ${redux.name}, ${react.name}`))
        .catch((err) => console.log('An error occurred: ', err));
});

Local Files

If you want your DevTools extensions to work on local file:// URLs (e.g. loaded via browserWindow.loadFile()), don't forget to set allowFileAccess in the options passed to installExtension.

installExtension(REDUX_DEVTOOLS, { loadExtensionOptions: { allowFileAccess: true } })

For more information see the Electron documentation.

What extensions can I use?

Technically you can use whatever extension you want. Simply find the ChromeStore ID of the extension you want to install, and call installExtension('YOUR_ID_HERE'). We offer a few extension ID's inside the package so you can easily import them to install without having to find them yourselves.

import {
  installExtension,
  EMBER_INSPECTOR, REACT_DEVELOPER_TOOLS,
  BACKBONE_DEBUGGER, JQUERY_DEBUGGER,
  VUEJS_DEVTOOLS, VUEJS_DEVTOOLS_BETA,
  REDUX_DEVTOOLS, MOBX_DEVTOOLS,
  APOLLO_DEVELOPER_TOOLS,
} from 'electron-devtools-installer';

How does it work?

Well, you know those steps over in the Electron Docs that involve downloading, copying, checking paths, Etc.

This does all of that for you, it downloads the chrome extension directly from the Chrome WebStore. Then it extracts it to your applications userData directory before loading it into Electron.

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Samuel Attard

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.