forge
Electron Forge is an all-in-one CLI and toolchain for scaffolding, developing, packaging, and distributing Electron desktop applications, wrapping the disparate Electron build tools (packager, rebuild, makers, publishers) behind a unified configuration.
Embed badge
[](https://opensources.dev/resource/forge)MITPermissive — free to use in commercial and proprietary software, with attribution.View license →
Production readiness
4/5- Actively maintainedCommits in the last 6 months
- No known vulnerabilitiesNot yet scanned
- Clear, usable licenseMIT (permissive)
- Proven adoptionWidely used
- Has documentationDocumentation indexed
npm install forgeOur analysis
Electron Forge is the officially maintained, batteries-included build pipeline for Electron apps. It consolidates project scaffolding, native module rebuilding, dev server, packaging, and platform-specific distributable creation into a single configurable dependency.
When to use forge
Use it when you want to start or maintain an Electron desktop app and prefer a sanctioned, opinionated toolchain that handles dev, packaging, and publishing without manually wiring together separate tools. Its plugin/maker/publisher system fits teams shipping to multiple platforms with code signing and auto-update.
When not to
Skip it if you want a lighter-weight, more performant alternative to Electron entirely (Tauri, Neutralino), or if you need fine-grained control and already have a mature custom build setup with electron-builder that you don't want to migrate.
Strengths
- Official Electron project with strong alignment to upstream tooling
- Single-command scaffolding via create-electron-app and one core dependency for the whole lifecycle
- Extensible architecture with makers, publishers, and plugins for bundlers like Vite/Webpack
- Handles native module rebuilds and code signing automatically
Trade-offs
- Inherits Electron's heavy runtime footprint (bundled Chromium)
- Opinionated configuration can be harder to customize at the edges than a hand-rolled setup
- A major rewrite is underway on the next branch, so current APIs may shift
- Packaging/signing on macOS and Windows still requires platform-specific certificate setup
Maturity
Mature and actively maintained under the official Electron organization with 7k+ stars; widely used in production for shipping desktop apps. A next-major version is in active development, signaling ongoing investment but also upcoming breaking changes.
Electron Forge
[!IMPORTANT] We're currently beginning feature development for the next major version of Electron Forge, which is being done in the
nextbranch. To try out experimental pre-releases, install the@alphadist-tag of the@electron-forge/*packages via npm. For more details, see issue https://github.com/electron/forge/issues/4082.
A complete tool for building modern Electron applications.
Electron Forge unifies the existing (and well maintained) build tools for Electron development into a simple, easy to use package so that anyone can jump right in to Electron development.
Website | Goals | Docs and Usage | Configuration | Support | Contributing
Getting Started
Pre-requisites:
Node 16.4.0 or higher
Git
You can initialize an Electron Forge project with the create-electron-app
CLI tool.
npx create-electron-app@latest my-new-app
# then
cd my-new-app
npm start
For more information on creating a new project from a template, see our CLI documentation.
Docs and Usage
For Electron Forge documentation and usage you should check out our website: electronforge.io
Project Goals
Starting with Electron should be as simple as a single command.
Developers shouldn't have to worry about setting up build tooling, native module rebuilding, etc. Everything should "just work" for them out of the box.
Everything from creating the project to packaging the project for release should be handled by one core dependency in a standard way while still offering users maximum choice and freedom.
With these goals in mind, under the hood this project uses, among others:
@electron/rebuild: Automatically recompiles native Node.js modules against the correct Electron version.@electron/packager: Customizes and bundles your Electron app to get it ready for distribution.
Contributing
If you are interested in reporting/fixing issues and contributing directly to the code base, please see CONTRIBUTING.md for more information on what we're looking for and how to get started.
Community
Please report bugs or feature requests in our issue tracker. You can find help for debugging your Electron Forge on the Support page, and ask questions in the official Electron Discord server, where there is a dedicated channel for Electron Forge.