Build Instructions (macOS)

Follow the guidelines below for building Electron itself on macOS, for the purposes of creating custom Electron binaries. For bundling and distributing your app code with the prebuilt Electron binaries, see the application distribution guide.

Prerequisites​

• macOS >= 10.11.6
• Xcode >= 9.0.0
• node.js (external)
• Python 2.7 with support for TLS 1.2

Python​

Please also ensure that your system and Python version support at least TLS 1.2. This depends on both your version of macOS and Python. For a quick test, run:

$ npx @electron/check-python-tls

If the script returns that your configuration is using an outdated security protocol, you can either update macOS to High Sierra or install a new version of Python 2.7.x. To upgrade Python, use Homebrew:

$ brew install python@2 && brew link python@2 --force

If you are using Python as provided by Homebrew, you also need to install the following Python modules:

• pyobjc

You can use pip to install it:

$ pip install pyobjc

macOS SDK​

If you're developing Electron and don't plan to redistribute your custom Electron build, you may skip this section.

Official Electron builds are built with Xcode 12.2, and the macOS 11.0 SDK. Building with a newer SDK works too, but the releases currently use the 11.0 SDK.

Building Electron​

See Build Instructions: GN.