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Electron 28.0.0

· 3 min read

Electron 28.0.0 has been released! It includes upgrades to Chromium 120.0.6099.56, V8 12.0, and Node.js 18.18.2.


The Electron team is excited to announce the release of Electron 28.0.0! You can install it with npm via npm install electron@latest or download it from our releases website. Continue reading for details about this release.

If you have any feedback, please share it with us on Twitter or Mastodon, or join our community Discord! Bugs and feature requests can be reported in Electron's issue tracker.

Notable Changes

Highlights

  • Implemented support for ECMAScript modules or ESM (What are ECMAScript modules? learn more here. This includes support for ESM in Electron proper, as well as areas such as the UtilityProcess API entrypoints. See our ESM documentation for more details.
  • In addition to enabling ESM support in Electron itself, Electron Forge also supports using ESM to package, build and develop Electron applications. You can find this support in Forge v7.0.0 or higher.

Stack Changes

New Features

  • Enabled ESM support. #37535
  • Added ESM entrypoints to the UtilityProcess API. #40047
  • Added several properties to the display object including detected, maximumCursorSize, and nativeOrigin. #40554
  • Added support for ELECTRON_OZONE_PLATFORM_HINT environment variable on Linux. #39792

Breaking Changes

Behavior Changed: WebContents.backgroundThrottling set to false affects all WebContents in the host BrowserWindow

WebContents.backgroundThrottling set to false will disable frames throttling in the BrowserWindow for all WebContents displayed by it.

Removed: BrowserWindow.setTrafficLightPosition(position)

BrowserWindow.setTrafficLightPosition(position) has been removed, the BrowserWindow.setWindowButtonPosition(position) API should be used instead which accepts null instead of { x: 0, y: 0 } to reset the position to system default.

// Removed in Electron 28
win.setTrafficLightPosition({ x: 10, y: 10 });
win.setTrafficLightPosition({ x: 0, y: 0 });

// Replace with
win.setWindowButtonPosition({ x: 10, y: 10 });
win.setWindowButtonPosition(null);

Removed: BrowserWindow.getTrafficLightPosition()

BrowserWindow.getTrafficLightPosition() has been removed, the BrowserWindow.getWindowButtonPosition() API should be used instead which returns null instead of { x: 0, y: 0 } when there is no custom position.

// Removed in Electron 28
const pos = win.getTrafficLightPosition();
if (pos.x === 0 && pos.y === 0) {
// No custom position.
}

// Replace with
const ret = win.getWindowButtonPosition();
if (ret === null) {
// No custom position.
}

Removed: ipcRenderer.sendTo()

The ipcRenderer.sendTo() API has been removed. It should be replaced by setting up a MessageChannel between the renderers.

The senderId and senderIsMainFrame properties of IpcRendererEvent have been removed as well.

Removed: app.runningUnderRosettaTranslation

The app.runningUnderRosettaTranslation property has been removed. Use app.runningUnderARM64Translation instead.

// Removed
console.log(app.runningUnderRosettaTranslation);
// Replace with
console.log(app.runningUnderARM64Translation);

End of Support for 25.x.y

Electron 25.x.y has reached end-of-support as per the project's support policy. Developers and applications are encouraged to upgrade to a newer version of Electron.

E28 (Dec'23)E29 (Feb'24)E30 (Apr'24)
28.x.y29.x.y30.x.y
27.x.y28.x.y29.x.y
26.x.y27.x.y28.x.y

What's Next

In the short term, you can expect the team to continue to focus on keeping up with the development of the major components that make up Electron, including Chromium, Node, and V8.

You can find Electron's public timeline here.

More information about future changes can be found on the Planned Breaking Changes page.