DEV Community

Cover image for Tiny alternative to electron
Rafi
Rafi

Posted on • Updated on

Tiny alternative to electron

I wanted to build a small desktop app for my own usage but using electron felt like an overkill (since I won't be using most of the API electron provides). So I wrote a really tiny alternative to electron.

you can easily use it as follows

const Tiny = require("tinytron")

const window = new Tiny();
window.setSize(500, 600);
window.setTitle("Your app");

// When using your own app use express to run the server and pass the url
window.navigate("http://dev.to/");
window.run();
window.destroy()
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

But unlike electron it does not come with node packed in so you may need to use something like pgk to generate binary that user can use

here is the link to the repo.

Latest comments (3)

Collapse
 
stereoplegic profile image
Mike Bybee

Very nice! I've developed with Electron since it was still called atom-shell (and NW.js when it was still called node-webkit before that), but I'm always keeping an eye on lighter alternatives - though I do tend to leverage the Node and Electron APIs pretty heavily instead of many things I'd do on backend (or occasionally even frontend) in the web app version.

Collapse
 
pentacular profile image
pentacular

You might consider including a link to the npm page or repository.

Collapse
 
rafi993 profile image
Rafi • Edited

Oh, Forgot to do that. Thanks for mentioning.