Nativefier

You want to make a native wrapper for Google Maps (or any web page).

$ nativefier maps.google.com

You're done.

Introduction

Nativefier is a command line tool that allows you to easily create a desktop application for any web site with succinct and minimal configuration. Apps are wrapped by Electron in an OS executable (.app, .exe, etc.) for use on Windows, OSX and Linux.

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

View the changelog here.

Relevant Hacker News Thread

Features

• Automatically retrieves the correct icon and app name
• Flash Support (Needs Testing)

Installation

With Node.js installed,

# for use from the command line
$ npm install nativefier -g

Optional Dependencies

.png to .icns Conversion

To support usage of a .png for a packaged OSX app icon (currently only supported on OSX), you need the following dependencies.

sips

Automatically ships with OSX

iconutil

You need XCode installed.

imagemagick

$ brew install imagemagick

Google Chrome

Google Chrome is required for flash to be supported. Alternatively, you could download the PepperFlash Chrome plugin and specify the path to it directly with the --flash flag. See the command line options below for more details.

Usage

Creating a native desktop app for medium.com:

$ nativefier "http://medium.com"

Nativefier will intelligently attempt to determine the app name, your OS and processor architecture, among other options. If desired, the app name or other options can be overwritten by specifying the --name "Medium" as part of the command line options, as such.

$ nativefier --name "Some Awesome App" "http://medium.com"

For Windows Users: Take note that the application menu is automatically hidden by default, you can press alt on your keyboard to access it.

For Linux Users: Do not put spaces if you define the app name yourself with --name, as this will cause problems (tested on Ubuntu 14.04) when pinning a packaged app to the launcher.

Command Line Options

$ nativefier [options] <targetUrl> [dest]

Command line options are listed below.

Target Url

The url to point the application at.

[dest]

Specifies the destination directory to build the app to, defaults to the current working directory.

Help

-h, --help

Prints the usage information.

Version

-V, --version

Prints the version of your nativefier install.

[name]

-n, --name <value>

The name of the application, which will affect strings in titles and the icon.

For Linux Users: Do not put spaces if you define the app name yourself with --name, as this will cause problems (tested on Ubuntu 14.04) when pinning a packaged app to the launcher.

[platform]

-p, --platform <value>

Automatically determined based on the current OS. Can be overwritten by specifying either linux, win32, or darwin.

[arch]

-a, --arch <value>

Processor architecture, automatically determined based on the current OS. Can be overwritten by specifying either ia32 or x64.

[electron-version]

-e, --electron-version <value>

Electron version without the v, see https://github.com/atom/electron/releases.

[overwrite]

-o, --overwrite

Specifies if the destination directory should be overwritten.

[conceal]

-c, --conceal

Specifies if the source code within the nativefied app should be packaged into an archive, defaults to false, read more.

[icon]

-i, --icon <path>

Packaging for Windows and Linux

The icon parameter should be a path to a .png file.

Packaging for OSX

The icon parameter can either be a .icns or a .png file if the optional dependencies listed above are installed.

With the sips, iconutil and imagemagick convert optional dependencies in your PATH, Nativefier will automatically convert the .png to a .icns for you.

Manually Converting .icns

iConvertIcons can be used to convert .pngs, though it can be quite cumbersome.

To retrieve the .icns file from the downloaded file, extract it first and press File > Get Info. Then select the icon in the top left corner of the info window and press ⌘-C. Open Preview and press File > New from clipboard and save the .icns file. It took me a while to figure out how to do that and question why a .icns file was not simply provided in the downloaded archive.

[counter]

--counter

Use a counter that persists even with window focus for the application badge for sites that use an "(X)" format counter in the page title (i.e. Gmail). Same limitations as the badge option (above).

[width]

--width <value>

Width of the packaged application, defaults to 1280px.

[height]

--height <value>

Height of the packaged application, defaults to 800px.

[show-menu-bar]

-m, --show-menu-bar

Specifies if the menu bar should be shown.

[user-agent]

-u, --user-agent <value>

Set the user agent to run the created app with.

[honest]

--honest

By default, nativefier uses a preset user agent string for your OS and masquerades as a regular Google Chrome browser, so that sites like WhatsApp Web will not say that the current browser is unsupported.

If this flag is passed, it will not override the user agent.

[ignore-certificate]

--ignore-certificate

Forces the packaged app to ignore certificate errors.

[insecure]

--insecure

Forces the packaged app to ignore web security errors.

[flash]

--flash <value>

By default, nativefier will automatically try to determine the location of your Google Chrome flash binary. In the event that Flash does not appear to work, you can specify it directly with this command line flag, by retrieving the location of the Flash path from chrome://plugins, under Adobe Flash Player > Location.

From my experience, it might be helpful to pass the --insecure flag if you are using nativefied flash apps, as some https websites tend to serve flash insecurely.

Programmatic API

You can use the Nativefier programmatic API as well.

$ npm install --save nativefier

In your .js file:

var nativefier = require('nativefier').default;

// possible options
var options = {
    name: 'Web WhatsApp',
    targetUrl: 'http://web.whatsapp.com', // required
    platform: 'darwin',
    arch: 'x64',
    version: '0.36.4',
    out: '~/Desktop',
    overwrite: true,
    asar: false, // see conceal
    icon: '~/Desktop/icon.png',
    counter: false,
    width: 1280,
    height: 800,
    showMenuBar: false,
    userAgent: null,
    ignoreCertificate: false,
    insecure: false,
    honest: false
};

nativefier(options, function(error, appPath) {
    if (error) {
        console.error(error);
        return;
    }
    console.log('App has been nativefied to', appPath);
});

More description about the options for nativefier can be found at the section on command line flags.

How It Works

A template app with the appropriate event listeners and callbacks set up is included in the ./app folder. When the nativefier command is executed, this folder is copied to a temporary directory with the appropriate parameters in a configuration file, and is packaged into an app with Electron Packager.

Automatic retrieval of icons is possible thanks to besticon.

Development

Setting up the project

$ git clone https://github.com/jiahaog/nativefier.git
$ cd nativefier

# Set up dependencies for the cli tool and the placeholder app
$ npm run dev-up

# Set up symlinks so that you can run `$ nativefier` for your local changes
$ npm link

After doing so, you can then run nativefier with your test parameters

$ nativefier <...>

Don't forget to compile source files (after making changes):

$ npm run build

Or you can automatically watch the files for changes with:

$ npm run watch

Notes

Tested mostly on OSX, but should work for Windows and Linux.