---
title: 'Building your First App'
description: 'This guide will step you through the process of creating a barebones Hello World app in Electron, similar to electron/electron-quick-start.'
slug: tutorial-first-app
hide_title: false
---
:::info Follow along the tutorial
This is **part 2** of the Electron tutorial.
1. [Prerequisites][prerequisites]
1. **[Building your First App][building your first app]**
1. [Using Preload Scripts][preload]
1. [Adding Features][features]
1. [Packaging Your Application][packaging]
1. [Publishing and Updating][updates]
:::
## Learning goals
In this part of the tutorial, you will learn how to set up your Electron project
and write a minimal starter application. By the end of this section,
you should be able to run a working Electron app in development mode from
your terminal.
## Setting up your project
:::caution Avoid WSL
If you are on a Windows machine, please do not use [Windows Subsystem for Linux][wsl] (WSL)
when following this tutorial as you will run into issues when trying to execute the
application.
:::
### Initializing your npm project
Electron apps are scaffolded using npm, with the package.json file
as an entry point. Start by creating a folder and initializing an npm package
within it with `npm init`.
```sh npm2yarn
mkdir my-electron-app && cd my-electron-app
npm init
```
This command will prompt you to configure some fields in your package.json.
There are a few rules to follow for the purposes of this tutorial:
- _entry point_ should be `main.js` (you will be creating that file soon).
- _author_, _license_, and _description_ can be any value, but will be necessary for
[packaging][packaging] later on.
Then, install Electron into your app's **devDependencies**, which is the list of external
development-only package dependencies not required in production.
:::info Why is Electron a devDependency?
This may seem counter-intuitive since your production code is running Electron APIs.
However, packaged apps will come bundled with the Electron binary, eliminating the need to specify
it as a production dependency.
:::
```sh npm2yarn
npm install electron --save-dev
```
Your package.json file should look something like this after initializing your package
and installing Electron. You should also now have a `node_modules` folder containing
the Electron executable, as well as a `package-lock.json` lockfile that specifies
the exact dependency versions to install.
```json title='package.json'
{
"name": "my-electron-app",
"version": "1.0.0",
"description": "Hello World!",
"main": "main.js",
"scripts": {
"test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
},
"author": "Jane Doe",
"license": "MIT",
"devDependencies": {
"electron": "23.1.3"
}
}
```
:::info Advanced Electron installation steps
If installing Electron directly fails, please refer to our [Advanced Installation][installation]
documentation for instructions on download mirrors, proxies, and troubleshooting steps.
:::
### Adding a .gitignore
The [`.gitignore`][gitignore] file specifies which files and directories to avoid tracking
with Git. You should place a copy of [GitHub's Node.js gitignore template][gitignore-template]
into your project's root folder to avoid committing your project's `node_modules` folder.
## Running an Electron app
:::tip Further reading
Read [Electron's process model][process-model] documentation to better
understand how Electron's multiple processes work together.
:::
The [`main`][package-json-main] script you defined in package.json is the entry point of any
Electron application. This script controls the **main process**, which runs in a Node.js
environment and is responsible for controlling your app's lifecycle, displaying native
interfaces, performing privileged operations, and managing renderer processes
(more on that later).
Before creating your first Electron app, you will first use a trivial script to ensure your
main process entry point is configured correctly. Create a `main.js` file in the root folder
of your project with a single line of code:
```js title='main.js'
console.log('Hello from Electron 👋')
```
Because Electron's main process is a Node.js runtime, you can execute arbitrary Node.js code
with the `electron` command (you can even use it as a [REPL][]). To execute this script,
add `electron .` to the `start` command in the [`scripts`][package-scripts]
field of your package.json. This command will tell the Electron executable to look for the main
script in the current directory and run it in dev mode.
```json {7} title='package.json'
{
"name": "my-electron-app",
"version": "1.0.0",
"description": "Hello World!",
"main": "main.js",
"scripts": {
"start": "electron .",
"test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
},
"author": "Jane Doe",
"license": "MIT",
"devDependencies": {
"electron": "23.1.3"
}
}
```
```sh npm2yarn
npm run start
```
Your terminal should print out `Hello from Electron 👋`. Congratulations,
you have executed your first line of code in Electron! Next, you will learn
how to create user interfaces with HTML and load that into a native window.
## Loading a web page into a BrowserWindow
In Electron, each window displays a web page that can be loaded either from a local HTML
file or a remote web address. For this example, you will be loading in a local file. Start
by creating a barebones web page in an `index.html` file in the root folder of your project:
```html title='index.html'
Hello from Electron renderer!
Hello from Electron renderer!
👋
```
Now that you have a web page, you can load it into an Electron [BrowserWindow][browser-window].
Replace the contents of your `main.js` file with the following code. We will explain each
highlighted block separately.
```js {1,3-10,12-14} title='main.js' showLineNumbers
const { app, BrowserWindow } = require('electron')
const createWindow = () => {
const win = new BrowserWindow({
width: 800,
height: 600
})
win.loadFile('index.html')
}
app.whenReady().then(() => {
createWindow()
})
```
### Importing modules
```js title='main.js (Line 1)'
const { app, BrowserWindow } = require('electron')
```
In the first line, we are importing two Electron modules
with CommonJS module syntax:
- [app][app], which controls your application's event lifecycle.
- [BrowserWindow][browser-window], which creates and manages app windows.
Module capitalization conventions
You might have noticed the capitalization difference between the **a**pp
and **B**rowser**W**indow modules. Electron follows typical JavaScript conventions here,
where PascalCase modules are instantiable class constructors (e.g. BrowserWindow, Tray,
Notification) whereas camelCase modules are not instantiable (e.g. app, ipcRenderer, webContents).
Typed import aliases
For better type checking when writing TypeScript code, you can choose to import
main process modules from electron/main.
```js
const { app, BrowserWindow } = require('electron/main')
```
For more information, see the [Process Model docs](../tutorial/process-model.md#process-specific-module-aliases-typescript).