Electron with Typescript application example

This example shows how to use Next.js inside an Electron application. To avoid a lot of configuration, we use Next.js as a router for pages, and use server rendering to speed up the initial render of the application. Both Next.js and Electron layers are written in TypeScript and compiled to JavaScript during the build process.

Part	Source code (Typescript)	Builds (JavaScript)
Next.js	/renderer	/renderer
Electron	/electron-src	/main
Production		/dist

For development it's going to run a HTTP server and let Next.js handle routing. In production it will use output: 'export' to pre-generate HTML static files and use them in your app (instead of running a HTTP server).

How to use

Execute create-next-app with npm, Yarn, or pnpm to bootstrap the example:

npx create-next-app --example with-electron-typescript with-electron-typescript-app

yarn create next-app --example with-electron-typescript with-electron-typescript-app

pnpm create next-app --example with-electron-typescript with-electron-typescript-app

Available commands:

"build-renderer": build and transpile Next.js layer
"build-electron": transpile electron layer
"build": build both layers
"dev": start dev version
"dist": create production electron build
"type-check": check TypeScript in project

Notes

You can create the production app using npm run dist.

note regarding types:

• Electron provides its own type definitions, so you don't need @types/electron installed! source: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@types/electron
• There were no types available for electron-next at the time of creating this example, so until they are available there is a file electron-next.d.ts in electron-src directory.