Loading App Dependencies Manually

warning

This approach must only be used in a development environment. In production, electron-builder packages the app/ directory as a self-contained bundle — no manual path injection is needed or appropriate.

Background

This tutorial is relevant only if you use the two-package.json structure (see Two Package Structure) where:

A root package.json holds your devDependencies (Electron, electron-builder, build tools)
An app/package.json holds your actual app dependencies — only this is packaged and shipped

During development, your main.js entry point typically lives outside the app/ directory (e.g., src/main.js). When Electron runs it, Node.js resolves modules relative to that file's location — meaning app/node_modules is not on the module search path by default.

Rather than duplicating your app dependencies in the root package.json, you can manually inject the app/node_modules path into Node's module resolution at startup, in dev mode only:

If you are not using the two-package.json structure, you do not need this tutorial.

// given this file is: /src/browser/main.js

const path = require('path')
const devMode = (process.argv || []).indexOf('--dev') !== -1

// load the app dependencies in dev mode
if (devMode) {
  const PATH_APP_NODE_MODULES = path.join(__dirname, '..', '..', 'app', 'node_modules')
  const Module = require('module')
  
  // for electron 16 or lower
  Module.globalPaths.push(PATH_APP_NODE_MODULES)
  
  // for electron 17 or higher
  const nodeModulePaths = Module._nodeModulePaths
  Module._nodeModulePaths = (from) =>
    nodeModulePaths(from).concat([PATH_APP_NODE_MODULES])
}

Background​

Background