How do I determine if an application is built by Electron or not?

Question

How do I determine if an application is built by Electron or not?

Could I always find specific file or binary on Electron apps?

Please give me some advice, thanks.

Answer 1

There are a few "non-futureproof" ways to check if an app was built on Electron and they vary depending of the OS.

You will need to go in your application folder (for example Applications for macOS, Program Files for Windows or /usr/share for Linux...

Here are some examples of the files/directory you may find in your application folder:

 Linux / Win32

These two OS have basically the same structure, so it's pretty easy to check what you want

• locales/
• resources/
• content_resources_200_percent.pak
• content_shell.pak
• blink_image_resources_200_percent.pak
• icudtl.dat

There are also some files like

• libffmpeg.so / ffmpeg.dll
• libnode.so / node.dll

depending of the OS you're on.

 macOS

It's a bit more complicated here. You might need to check the Info.plist file to see if there is any reference to Electron.

As unseen_damage said, you can also check in [app folder]/Contents/Resources if there is an app.asar as .asar files are specifically created for Electron.

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Anyway, all those files may see their names changes someday, so don't consider them as a reliable way to check if "any" app is built on Electron, it's more of a manual way to check it.

Answer 2

MacOs

To find all Electron apps by finding the .asar file on your mac, use this.

1. open Terminal
2. run this command
   find /Applications -name '*.asar' -print

Answer 3

MAC: open a terminal type cd /Applications, then, change directory (cd) into the name of the application you want to check. For example, if it is iTunes, you would do the following /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/Resources. If you see an app.asar file, or something similar with the .asar suffix, it is most likely an Electron App.

Windows: Open up the program files directory of the application you are wondering about, and check the file folder for any file with .asar suffix. This can be done via the search, terminal, etc.

Bottom line- Electron apps, when packaged, are bundled into an asar file, and you can search for this file extension to see if the program was built with electron.

Documentation- http://electron.atom.io/docs/tutorial/application-packaging/

Answer 4

macOS

You can also run the following terminal command:

find /Applications -name "*Electron Framework*" | cut -d/ -f3 | sort -u | cut -d. -f1

This will output an alphabetized and cleaned up list of just the application names.

Source: https://talk.macpowerusers.com/t/why-the-dislike-of-electron-apps/20697/20