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I have to develop an app with Windows, MacOS and Chrome OS support – at the very least. Chrome OS is an important requirement because this app is intended to be used in schools – where Chromebooks are a kind of a big deal. As you may know, Chrome apps are being deprecated on Windows, MacOS and Linux, so that leaves us with two choices for web-based "native" apps: Electron and NW.js.

Since I'm developing this app from the ground up, and not converting any existing web code, I feel inclined to choose Electron for this particular project. However, I can't find any reliable / complete / concrete answers regarding if Electron may be used for developing Chrome OS apps. I found this release note which states:

Electron now provides builds for Linux on ARMv7. It runs on popular platforms like Chromebook and Raspberry Pi 2.

However, officially, Electron only supports Windows, MacOS and Linux, which leads me to think that this Chromebook support might be somewhat limited, which, in turn, leads me to think that NW.js might be a better choice for this project.

My concrete questions are: Has anybody successfully created a Chrome OS app with Electron? Are any of these apps easily installable by regular users? (12 year-old kids) Or do they require some kind of Linux-like hack to get them running?

calvillo
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    "Developers can continue to build Chrome apps for Chrome OS." https://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to-web.html – Josh Lee Aug 28 '17 at 19:35
  • @Josh Yes, but they are removing support for Windows and MacOS, which I also need. – calvillo Aug 28 '17 at 19:41
  • What are the requirements of your project? What native apis do you need or would a web app suffice? – Daniel Herr Aug 28 '17 at 19:51
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    @DanielHerr I have to download, unzip, process, and store large files (200MB+). I also have to access those files later. – calvillo Aug 28 '17 at 21:29
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    _"It runs on popular platforms like Chromebook and Raspberry Pi 2."_ This probably refers to Chromebook hardware running Linux, not ChromeOS. – Xan Aug 29 '17 at 11:04

3 Answers3

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You must use Chrome Apps for software on Chrome OS. Also, Google has not announced any intention to remove Chrome Apps from Chrome OS. You will need NW.js or Electron on Windows, Linux, and Mac.

However, this does not require completely separate codebases. NW.js has native support for Chrome Apps, and there is a partial polyfill for Electron.

There are some differences you need to account for, such as the lack of autoupdating and installation from the Chrome Web Store for NW.js/Electron.

Daniel Herr
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Well now Google allows users to install Linux applications. So if you want to target Chrome OS you can start by building for Linux which you can do with Electron.

mrrobot1999
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One hack that should allow to use electron is using a vitual machine with Linux running like described in this Blog https://www.blog.google/products/chromebooks/linux-on-chromebooks/ However I did not tried it.

pungggi
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