Commands

Available electron-builder CLI commands

electron-builder provides several commands to build, install dependencies, and manage your Electron application.

electron-builder build

The main command to build your Electron application. This is the default command.

electron-builder build

Or simply:

electron-builder

Build for specific platforms

# Build for macOS, Windows and Linux
electron-builder -mwl

# Build for macOS only
electron-builder --mac

# Build for Windows only
electron-builder --win

# Build for Linux only
electron-builder --linux

Build specific targets

# Build deb and tar.xz for Linux
electron-builder --linux deb tar.xz

# Build NSIS 32-bit installer for Windows
electron-builder --windows nsis:ia32

Build for specific architectures

# Build for Windows ia32
electron-builder --win --ia32

# Build for x64
electron-builder --x64

# Build universal macOS app
electron-builder --mac --universal

Build unpacked directory

Useful for testing without creating distributable packages:

electron-builder --dir

Using npx

Since Node.js 8, you can use npx to run electron-builder without a global install:

npx electron-builder

Prepend npx to sample commands if you run them from Terminal and not from package.json scripts.

electron-builder install-app-deps

Installs or rebuilds native dependencies for your Electron application.

electron-builder install-app-deps

Or using the standalone command:

install-app-deps

Options

• --platform - Target platform (linux, darwin, win32). Defaults to current platform.
• --arch - Target architecture (x64, ia32, armv7l, arm64, all). Defaults to current architecture.

# Install dependencies for specific platform
electron-builder install-app-deps --platform=win32

# Install dependencies for specific architecture
electron-builder install-app-deps --arch=arm64

electron-builder node-gyp-rebuild

Rebuild native Node.js modules for Electron.

electron-builder node-gyp-rebuild

This command uses the same options as install-app-deps:

# Rebuild for specific platform and architecture
electron-builder node-gyp-rebuild --platform=darwin --arch=arm64

electron-builder create-self-signed-cert

Create a self-signed code signing certificate for Windows applications.

electron-builder create-self-signed-cert --publisher="Your Company Name"

Options

• --publisher, -p (required) - The publisher name for the certificate

electron-builder start

Run your application in development mode using electron-webpack.

electron-builder start

electron-builder publish

Publish a list of artifacts to configured publishers (e.g., GitHub Releases).

electron-builder publish

Options

• --files, -f (required) - The file(s) to upload to your publisher
• --version, -v - The app/build version used when searching for an upload release
• --config, -c - Path to electron-builder config file

# Publish specific files
electron-builder publish --files dist/MyApp-1.0.0.dmg

# Publish with specific version
electron-builder publish --files dist/*.dmg --version 1.0.0

Getting Help

For detailed help on any command, use the --help flag:

electron-builder --help
electron-builder install-app-deps --help
electron-builder publish --help

For more documentation, visit https://electron.build.