electron/docs/api/app.md

app

The app module is responsible for controlling the application's life time.

The example of quitting the whole application when the last window is closed:

var app = require('app');
app.on('window-all-closed', function() {
  app.quit();
});

Event: will-finish-launching

Emitted when application has done basic startup. On Windows and Linux it is the same with ready event, on OS X this event represents the applicationWillFinishLaunching message of NSApplication, usually you would setup listeners to open-file and open-url events here, and start the crash reporter and auto updater.

Under most cases you should just do everything in ready event.

Event: ready

Emitted when atom-shell has done everything initializaiton.

Event: window-all-closed

Emitted when all windows have been closed.

This event is only emitted when the application is not going to quit. If a user pressed Cmd + Q, or the developer called app.quit(), atom-shell would first try to close all windows and then emit the will-quit event, and in this case the window-all-closed would not be emitted.

Event: will-quit

• event Event

Emitted when all windows have been closed and the application will quit. Calling event.preventDefault() will prevent the default behaviour, which is terminating the application.

See description of window-all-closed for the differences between will-quit and it.

Event: open-file

• event Event
• path String

Emitted when user wants to open a file with the application, it usually happens when the application is already opened and then OS wants to reuse the application to open file.

You should call event.preventDefault() if you want to handle this event.

Event: open-url

• event Event
• url String

Emitted when user wants to open a URL with the application, this URL scheme must be registered to be opened by your application.

You should call event.preventDefault() if you want to handle this event.

Event: activate-with-no-open-windows

Emitted when the application is activated while there is no opened windows. It usually happens when user has closed all of application's windows and then click on the application's dock icon.

app.quit()

Try to close all windows. If all windows are successfully closed, the will-quit event will be emitted and by default the application would be terminated.

This method guarantees all beforeunload and unload handlers are correctly executed. It is possible that a window cancels the quitting by returning false in beforeunload handler.

app.terminate()

Quit the application directly, it will not try to close all windows so cleanup code will not run.

app.getVersion()

Returns the version of loaded application, if no version is found in application's package.json, the version of current bundle or executable would be returned.

app.getName()

Returns current application's name, the name in package.json would be used.

Usually the name field of package.json is a short lowercased name, according to the spec of npm modules. So usually you should also specify a productName field, which is your application's full capitalized name, and it will be preferred over name by atom-shell.

app.commandLine.appendSwitch(switch, [value])

Append a switch [with optional value] to Chromium's command line.

Note: This will not affect process.argv, and is mainly used by developers to control some low-level Chromium behaviors.

app.commandLine.appendArgument(value)

Append an argument to Chromium's command line. The argument will quoted properly.

Note: This will not affect process.argv.

app.dock.bounce([type])

• type String - Can be critical or informational, the default is
• informational

When critical is passed, the dock icon will bounce until either the application becomes active or the request is canceled.

When informational is passed, the dock icon will bounce for one second. The request, though, remains active until either the application becomes active or the request is canceled.

An ID representing the request would be returned.

Note: This API is only available on Mac.

app.dock.cancelBounce(id)

• id Integer

Cancel the bounce of id.

Note: This API is only available on Mac.

app.dock.setBadge(text)

• text String

Sets the string to be displayed in the dock’s badging area.

Note: This API is only available on Mac.

app.dock.getBadge()

Returns the badge string of the dock.

Note: This API is only available on Mac.