Create Desktop Apps with Electron, React, and TypeScript

Desktop applications remain important for many types of software projects, providing rich, native user experiences. If you're interested in building desktop applications but want to leverage your web development skills, Electron is an excellent solution. By combining the power of JavaScript, React, and TypeScript, Electron allows you to create cross-platform desktop applications using familiar web technologies. Whether you're developing tools for productivity, data visualization, or custom enterprise software, Electron offers the flexibility and performance required to deliver high-quality apps.

We just published a course on the freeCodeCamp.org YouTube channel that will teach you all about using Electron, React, and TypeScript to build robust desktop applications. Created by Niklas Ziermann, this comprehensive course covers everything from setting up your development environment to implementing advanced features like data visualization, secure communication, and custom window frames. By the end of this course, you'll have the knowledge to create polished, feature-rich desktop apps with Electron, all while writing clean, type-safe code in TypeScript.

The course begins with an introduction to how Electron works, showing you how it integrates with Node.js to create native-like applications. You'll then set up React, followed by Electron, ensuring that your project is ready to handle front-end rendering and system interactions. TypeScript is introduced early in the course, helping you enforce strict types, which leads to fewer errors and a more maintainable codebase. Once your environment is configured, you’ll dive deeper into the inner workings of Electron, setting up Electron-Builder for packaging and distribution, and making developer experience (DX) improvements to streamline your workflow.

From there, the course explores more advanced features, such as reading system resources and securely communicating between your app’s front-end and back-end. You'll also learn about Inter-Process Communication (IPC) and how to make it type-safe, ensuring consistent and secure data transfer. The course even includes sections on data visualization, an important skill for developers building apps that need to display complex information in an easily digestible format.

Additional topics covered in the course include customizing the tray and menu bar, enabling view switching, and creating custom window frames to give your app a unique look and feel. Security is also a major focus, with lessons on securing the app to prevent malicious attacks. To ensure that your application is bug-free, you'll also learn about testing, including end-to-end (E2E) testing and unit testing, which are critical for maintaining high-quality code as your project grows.

If you're looking to take your web development skills to the desktop, this course is the perfect opportunity to learn how to harness Electron, React, and TypeScript. Watch the full course on the freeCodeCamp.org YouTube channel (4-hour watch).