electron: My app is crashing on start-up when packaged on Electron v6

In Electron v6 two new Helper applications were added to the macOS application bundle. These helpers live alongside Electron Helper.app as Electron Helper (Renderer).app and Electron Helper (Plugin).app. These helpers must be shipped with your packaged application if they are not your application will crash on startup.

In order to support these new helpers, you need to be on the latest version of whatever packaging system you use. Information for the major packaging systems is included below.

Electron Packager

electron-packager@14.0.4 includes the changes required to make Electron v6 work correctly. You should upgrade to this version or higher.

Electron Forge

electron-forge depends on electron-packager internally to just ensure you have the latest version of electron-packager and you’ll be fine.

Electron Builder

electron-builder does not currently support these new helpers, please follow this isue to track support for these helpers

My app still crashes though?

If your application bundle includes these helpers applications and your app still crashes you are almost certainly running into a different issue, please raise a new issue for your crash instead of piling onto this one 👍

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 5 years ago
Reactions: 23
Comments: 34 (4 by maintainers)

Commits related to this issue

Upgrade electron-packager to support Electron 6+ See https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/19511 — committed to doches/lilypond-ui by doches 5 years ago
electron-packager v14.0.4 https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/19511 — committed to k0kubun/Nocturn by k0kubun 3 years ago
electron-packager v14.0.4 https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/19511 — committed to pro0810/electron-react-twitter by pro0810 3 years ago

Most upvoted comments

🆕 Electron Builder (v21.2.0)

Electron Builder now supports these new helpers:

$ npm update electron-builder@latest --save-dev

HaNdTriX on Aug 2, 2019

I gave up on Electron tbh, and ended up re-writing it in Swift as it is mac only for now

stephendwolff on Oct 9, 2019

For some unknown reasons I was able to build, sign and notarize a .dmg with the latest electron-builder 22.1.0, and the setting “hardenedRuntime”: false, yes false. Before this, we were not able to launch our app att all, getting the EXC_BAD_ACCESS error, though it was successfully notarized, too. Maybe this info will help someone.

DominikLevitsky on Oct 31, 2019

@Aarbel thanks for your suggestion. @stephendwolff : I think you will need to notarize your app. I had a similar issue where I was able to build and sign. However, it would crash right after you open it. It fixed after notarized my app. The below guides help me a lot:

https://help.apple.com/xcode/mac/current/#/dev033e997ca

https://kilianvalkhof.com/2019/electron/notarizing-your-electron-application/

https://medium.com/@TwitterArchiveEraser/notarize-electron-apps-7a5f988406db

ash67 on Oct 2, 2019

@gaodeng that bundle identifier is being generated by something in your own build system, it is not the bundle ID these helpers normally ship with

MarshallOfSound on Aug 8, 2019

@caesar When submitted via the Application Loader, it gives these error:

ERROR ITMS-90277: "Invalid Bundle Identifier. The application bundle contains a tool or framework Electron Helper (GPU) [fm.moon.apps.desktop.player.pkg/Payload/Moon FM.app/Contents/Frameworks/Moon FM Helper (GPU).app] using the bundle identifier 'fm.moon.apps.desktop.player.helper.(GPU)', which is not a valid bundle identifier." 

ERROR ITMS-90277: "Invalid Bundle Identifier. The application bundle contains a tool or framework Electron Helper (Plugin) [fm.moon.apps.desktop.player.pkg/Payload/Moon FM.app/Contents/Frameworks/Moon FM Helper (Plugin).app] using the bundle identifier 'fm.moon.apps.desktop.player.helper.(Plugin)', which is not a valid bundle identifier."

ERROR ITMS-90277: "Invalid Bundle Identifier. The application bundle contains a tool or framework Electron Helper (Renderer) [fm.moon.apps.desktop.player.pkg/Payload/Moon FM.app/Contents/Frameworks/Moon FM Helper (Renderer).app] using the bundle identifier 'fm.moon.apps.desktop.player.helper.(Renderer)', which is not a valid bundle identifier."

gaodeng on Aug 8, 2019

Worth noting that if your app crashes on start up only in dark mode on Windows, you’re probably running into #19468.

caesar on Aug 2, 2019