electron-builder: Auto-Update quitAndInstall Not Working On Mac

It is not electron-updater issue. Please see https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/3583

As you have made a donation, issue was investigated by me for you.

You need to modify your code:

setImmediate(() => {
  app.removeAllListeners("window-all-closed")
  if (focusedWindow != null) {
    focusedWindow.close()
  }
  autoUpdater.quitAndInstall(false)
})

1. In the your dialog handler, you must call quitAndInstall or other actions only in the setImmediate. To ensure that all dialog/sheet windows were released.
2. To ensure that your window-all-closed handler (if it is added, e.g. https://github.com/develar/onshape-desktop-shell/blob/master/src/WindowManager.ts#L16) doesn’t prevent quit, remove all such listeners app.removeAllListeners("window-all-closed").
3. Explicitly close window. mainWindow.close() If you have more than one windows, close all (BrowserWindow.getAllWindows() to get all windows).

If still no luck — try mainWindow.destroy().

Don’t forget to update to electron-updater 2.1.1

I (quite naturally) had a close event on a BrowserWindow set up (for Macs) in order to capture the Command+W hotkey. Because of this, the autoUpdater.quitAndInstall method wasn’t working. Here’s my go at a helper-function to deal with cases of aggressive event listeners preventing the app from properly restarting:

/**
 * ensureSafeQuitAndInstall
 * 
 * @access  public
 * @return  void
 */
function ensureSafeQuitAndInstall() {
    const electron = require('electron');
    const app = electron.app;
    const BrowserWindow = electron.BrowserWindow;
    app.removeAllListeners('window-all-closed');
    var browserWindows = BrowserWindow.getAllWindows();
    browserWindows.forEach(function(browserWindow) {
        browserWindow.removeAllListeners('close');
    });
}

Hope this is helpful to someone out there 😃

@sweetevil unfortunately, the author left out a critical piece of information from the documentation – auto updating will not work unless your Mac application is signed.

I found this out by reading through the electron docs for auto updating.

Your application must be signed for automatic updates on macOS. This is a requirement of Squirrel.Mac

As electron-builder makes use of Squirrel.Mac, this may be the cause of your issue.

@Kirezi

Sadly, it’s been years, and I ended up abandoning our attempt at a native (Electron wrapped) app. At the time, Electron required way (way way) too much low-level logic to work reliably. It’s been years, so my guess is it’s not as bad anymore. But I’m not sure where exactly I put that. Likely in the boot script (or whatever the language equivalent of that is these days).

I (quite naturally) had a close event on a BrowserWindow set up (for Macs) in order to capture the Command+W hotkey. Because of this, the autoUpdater.quitAndInstall method wasn’t working. Here’s my go at a helper-function to deal with cases of aggressive event listeners preventing the app from properly restarting:

/**
 * ensureSafeQuitAndInstall
 * 
 * @access  public
 * @return  void
 */
function ensureSafeQuitAndInstall() {
    const electron = require('electron');
    const app = electron.app;
    const BrowserWindow = electron.BrowserWindow;
    app.removeAllListeners('window-all-closed');
    var browserWindows = BrowserWindow.getAllWindows();
    browserWindows.forEach(function(browserWindow) {
        browserWindow.removeAllListeners('close');
    });
}

Hope this is helpful to someone out there 😃

This (we think) just solved a massive issue with our app’s upgrade flow. Thanks!