What’s New in Electron 6.0? Exploring the Latest Promise Features and API Updates
Electron 6.0, the newest stable release, brings Chromium 76, Node.js 12.4, V8 7.6, enhanced Promise support, async dialog APIs, new shell.showItemInFolder, and numerous API improvements such as excludedFromShownWindowsMenu, all_frames support, Linux preview, Touch ID, and more, all installable via npm.
Electron is an open-source framework based on Node.js and Chromium that lets developers build cross‑platform desktop applications with JavaScript, HTML and CSS.
The latest stable version, Electron 6.0, updates the core to Chromium 76, Node.js 12.4 and V8 7.6, and adds new Promise capabilities.
New Promise support
Electron 6.0 continues the modernization started in 5.0 by improving Promise handling. Functions such as dialog.showMessageBox(), dialog.showMessageBoxSync(), dialog.showOpenDialog(), dialog.showOpenDialogSync(), dialog.showSaveDialog() and dialog.showSaveDialogSync() now return a Promise while still supporting the legacy callback style.
Promise represents the eventual completion or failure of an asynchronous operation. It is an object you can attach callbacks to instead of passing callbacks directly to a function.
The new Promise APIs also keep backward‑compatible callback support.
A significant change is that Node.js modules can be loaded in the renderer process in different ways (as N‑API or Context‑Aware), improving performance and security; further changes are planned for Electron 11.
Additionally, shell.showItemInFolder() now works asynchronously.
Electron 6.0 update summary
API improvements
excludedFromShownWindowsMenu attribute to hide windows from the Windows menu
all_frames support for Chrome extension content scripts
Linux file preview support <webview>.getWebContentsId() method
Better error messages when the remote module is thrown
Scroll Lock accelerator support
Native emoji picker and color selector on Windows and macOS
Option to disable thumbnail extraction via desktopCapturer.getSources()
Native Touch ID authentication on macOS
inspectSharedWorker() API for collaborative devtools usage
Install the latest version with npm install electron@latest.
Signed-in readers can open the original source through BestHub's protected redirect.
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