How to get the original path of a portable Electron app?

Question

I have an Portable Electron App (packed with: electron-builder + asar, portable build) on Windows. I try to get the application path but it returns a path within the user\temp folder rather than the actual '.exe' file

Is there any way to get the original app.exe path?

I've tried the following:

• app.getAppPath()
• __dirname
• require.main.filename
• app-root-path
• and a few node modules

The path I'm getting from my tests:

C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\Temp\xxxxxx.tmp\app

the actual .exe Path (where the app launched from, and what i need):

C:\Users\XXX\Documents\test\dist

I'm just starting with Electron.

Overdraw

I collected some path data for windows and mac - see here github.com/BananaAcid/Simple-Electron-Kiosk/blob/master/… – Cetacean

Answer 1

I found a solution: Use the Environment Variable (created by Electron-Builder)

process.env.PORTABLE_EXECUTABLE_DIR

to show the real Path of the App.exe. Works only packed with Electron-Builder

Overdraw

I'm on mac right now where this is empty..tried it in dev mode and after building :/ – Tribrach

on windows it seems to work..so maybe combining this for windows and the other answer (which isn't working as expected on windows) for mac and maybe linux which I still have to investigate so who receives the bounty? – Tribrach

Out of curiosity is this environment variable set at all by a non portable build of the application? If not it would be a nice way for the app to be able to tell whether or not it was portable. – Heerlen

Does not work anymore! PORTABLE_EXECUTABLE_DIR is undefined – Obstacle

Answer 2

From the main process:

// If not already defined...
const { app } = require ('electron');
const path = require ('path');

let execPath;

execPath = path.dirname (app.getPath ('exe'));
// or
execPath = path.dirname (process.execPath);

From a renderer process:

// If not already defined...
const { remote } = require ('electron');
const path = require ('path');

let execPath;

execPath = path.dirname (remote.app.getPath ('exe'));
// or
execPath = path.dirname (remote.process.execPath);

Mayweed

on mac it returns ../build/mac/APPName.app/Contents/MacOS which is not what we need...we could String.replace or String.split to get only the ...builld/mac part, then it would be nice to programmatically know the app names of every build because windows and linux have version numbers (maybe I just construct it from the package.json) I'll check if it yields the same on windows and linux :-) – Tribrach

maybe a combination of your solution and the one from LycaKnight..but then who earns the bounty? – Tribrach

For me it returned /Applications/Weaver.app/Contents/MacOS and the path required was /Applications/Weaver.app/Contents/MacOS/Weaver with Weaver being the name of my app. My tests was requiring the path, and now the test does start an instance of Electron (Weaver) – Halfsole

Answer 3

I had a lot of trouble with this and was finally able to solve the issue by replacing __dirname with '.', see working example below :

const path = require('path')
const myAppPath = path.resolve('.', 'myapp.exe');

Myocardiograph

It took me Hours to find this solution. Thanks – Allure

Spent 30 minutes searching multiple responses that made no difference. This is the only solution that has worked so far. Makes no sense that it's not in the documentation. – Narcolepsy

Answer 4

Seems like PORTABLE_EXECUTABLE_FILE only works under certain Electron-Builder configurations; In particular, it won't work in apps deployed as a portable directory.

In such cases, the following will get you the application root path:

const path = require('path')
import { app } from 'electron'

let rootDir = app.getAppPath()
let last = path.basename(rootDir)
if (last == 'app.asar') {
    rootDir = Path.dirname(app.getPath('exe'))
}

Supernova

Answer 5

None of the above answers worked for me on Windows 10.

process.env.PORTABLE_EXECUTABLE_DIR returns the Temp directory path.

I got it to work using:

process.env.INIT_CWD

Wentletrap

Answer 6

process.env.PORTABLE_EXECUTABLE_FILE

will give you the full path to the file.

Curry

in my project PORTABLE_EXECUTABLE_FILE is undefined in DEV build. No idea why – Niall

It should be. You need to create the .exe file and then execute it for that variable to be defined. – Curry

Answer 7

As none of the methods above worked and I don't want to use an external lib for this, i tried following:

        if (!fs.existsSync("../images")) {
            fs.mkdirSync("./../images");            
        }
        return path.resolve("./../images/") + "/";

You can use any directory that should exist at the top level or anywhere else. In my case I know that one level higher in the directory there must be a directory called "images".

This solution worked in my case for DEV build and prod (packaged).

Are there any drawbacks when using this approach?

Niall

The fact that you are creating a directory outside of your application? How do you know you even have the permissions to do so? – Heerlen

Answer 8

I used process.env.PORTABLE_EXECUTABLE_DIR but it works only when I make the portable but when I use npm start I got undefiend, So I solve this issue by checking the node_env using the following code (process.env.NODE_ENV !== "development") ? process.env.PORTABLE_EXECUTABLE_DIR : path.dirname(app.getAppPath())

you can change the path.dirname(app.getAppPath()) by the path you want to get in the development mode.

Quartering