crashReporter

Submit crash reports to a remote server.

Process: Main, Renderer

The following is an example of setting up Electron to automatically submit crash reports to a remote server:

const { crashReporter } = require('electron')

crashReporter.start({ submitURL: 'https://your-domain.com/url-to-submit' })

For setting up a server to accept and process crash reports, you can use following projects:

Or use a 3rd party hosted solution:

Crash reports are stored temporarily before being uploaded in a directory underneath the app's user data directory (called 'Crashpad' on Windows and Mac, or 'Crash Reports' on Linux). You can override this directory by calling app.setPath('crashDumps', '/path/to/crashes') before starting the crash reporter.

On Windows and macOS, Electron uses crashpad to monitor and report crashes. On Linux, Electron uses breakpad. This is an implementation detail driven by Chromium, and it may change in future. In particular, crashpad is newer and will likely eventually replace breakpad on all platforms.

Note about Node child processes on Linux

If you are using the Node.js child_process module and want to report crashes from those processes on Linux, there is an extra step you will need to take to properly initialize the crash reporter in the child process. This is not necessary on Mac or Windows, as those platforms use Crashpad, which automatically monitors child processes.

Since require('electron') is not available in Node child processes, the following APIs are available on the process object in Node child processes. Note that, on Linux, each Node child process has its own separate instance of the breakpad crash reporter. This is dissimilar to renderer child processes, which have a "stub" breakpad reporter which returns information to the main process for reporting.

Methods

The crashReporter module has the following methods:

`crashReporter.start(options)`

options Object
- submitURL String (optional) - URL that crash reports will be sent to as POST. Required unless uploadToServer is false.
- productName String (optional) - Defaults to app.name.
- companyName String (optional) Deprecated - Deprecated alias for { globalExtra: { _companyName: ... } }.
- uploadToServer Boolean (optional) - Whether crash reports should be sent to the server. If false, crash reports will be collected and stored in the crashes directory, but not uploaded. Default is true.
- ignoreSystemCrashHandler Boolean (optional) - If true, crashes generated in the main process will not be forwarded to the system crash handler. Default is false.
- rateLimit Boolean (optional) macOS Windows - If true, limit the number of crashes uploaded to 1/hour. Default is false.
- compress Boolean (optional) - If true, crash reports will be compressed and uploaded with Content-Encoding: gzip. Default is true.
- extra Record<String, String> (optional) - Extra string key/value annotations that will be sent along with crash reports that are generated in the main process. Only string values are supported. Crashes generated in child processes will not contain these extra parameters to crash reports generated from child processes, call addExtraParameter from the child process.
- globalExtra Record<String, String> (optional) - Extra string key/value annotations that will be sent along with any crash reports generated in any process. These annotations cannot be changed once the crash reporter has been started. If a key is present in both the global extra parameters and the process-specific extra parameters, then the global one will take precedence. By default, productName and the app version are included, as well as the Electron version.

This method must be called before using any other crashReporter APIs. Once initialized this way, the crashpad handler collects crashes from all subsequently created processes. The crash reporter cannot be disabled once started.

This method should be called as early as possible in app startup, preferably before app.on('ready'). If the crash reporter is not initialized at the time a renderer process is created, then that renderer process will not be monitored by the crash reporter.

Note: You can test out the crash reporter by generating a crash using process.crash().

Note: If you need to send additional/updated extra parameters after your first call start you can call addExtraParameter.

Note: Parameters passed in extra, globalExtra or set with addExtraParameter have limits on the length of the keys and values. Key names must be at most 39 bytes long, and values must be no longer than 127 bytes. Keys with names longer than the maximum will be silently ignored. Key values longer than the maximum length will be truncated.