Nativefier

Introduction

Packages and wraps a single-page web app in an Electron OS executable (.app, .exe, etc) via the command line.

Simply a fork with a small layer of abstraction on top of electron-packager for the command line.

I did this because I was tired of having to ⌘-tab or alt-tab to my browser and then search through the numerous tabs open when I was using Whatsapp Web or Facebook Messenger.

Notes

A back button is intentionally not provided because the tool is designed for single page apps. However, if desired, an executable can built for any url, and simply pressing the backspace key will take the user back to the previous page.

Tested only on OSX

Installation

# for use from cli
npm install nativefier -g

Usage

Usage: nativefier <appname> --target=<url> --platform=<platform> --arch=<arch> --version=<version>

Required options

appname            name for the app
target             target url for the single page app
platform           all, or one or more of: linux, win32, darwin (comma-delimited if multiple)
arch               all, ia32, x64
version            see https://github.com/atom/electron/releases

Example            nativefier Messenger --target=http://messenger.com --platform=darwin --arch=x64 --version=0.28.2

Optional options

all                equivalent to --platform=all --arch=all
out                the dir to put the app into at the end. defaults to current working dir
icon               the icon file to use as the icon for the app (should be a .icns file on OSX)
app-bundle-id      bundle identifier to use in the app plist
app-version        version to set for the app
helper-bundle-id   bundle identifier to use in the app helper plist
ignore             do not copy files into App whose filenames regex .match this string
prune              runs `npm prune --production` on the app
overwrite          if output directory for a platform already exists, replaces it rather than skipping it
asar               packages the source code within your app into an archive
sign               should contain the identity to be used when running `codesign` (OS X only)
version-string     should contain a hash of the application metadata to be embedded into the executable (Windows only).
                   These can be specified on the command line via dot notation,
                   e.g. --version-string.CompanyName="Company Inc." --version-string.ProductName="Product"
                   Keys supported:
                   - CompanyName
                   - LegalCopyright
                   - FileDescription
                   - OriginalFilename
                   - FileVersion
                   - ProductVersion
                   - ProductName
                   - InternalName

See electron-packager for more details.

Examples

Creating a native wrapper of http://messenger.com for OSX x64:

$ nativefier Messenger --platform=darwin --arch=x64 --version=0.29.1 --target='http://messenger.com' --overwrite

Todo

• Set the app icon from a url in the CLI
• Set the app window dimensions from the CLI
• Dock badges