Convert any website to a desktop app with Nativefier

Nativefier is a tool that allows us to turn any website into a desktop application simply by invoking a command.

The application is intended to convert frequently visited web pages into desktop applications, making them very convenient to use.

It is also very useful (in my opinion, more useful) if we want to generate a small executable of our web application, to distribute it as an alternative (for example, if you want to create a luisllamas.exe 😜)

Under the hood, Nativefier uses Electron technology to create a Windows, macOS, or Linux application that displays a specific web page.

In other words, Nativefier basically creates a “small browser” for us using Chromium technology, which displays the web page we want.

How to use Netifier

One of the strongest points of Nativefier is that it is really simple. We just have to add the utility to NodeJS by doing,

npm install -g nativefier

Once installed, we just need to run this command to convert any website,

nativefier "https://my-web-app.com" --name "My Application"

With this command, we would have created a desktop application from the web application at https://my-web-app.com, with the name “My Application”.

We just have to indicate the URL of the application, and the customization options we require. Certainly, it couldn’t be easier.

We have a large number of options that we can use during its use. For example, we can choose to have the window in full-screen mode, “always on top”, among others. You have all the available options in the API documentation.

Nativefier is multiplatform, and compatible with Windows (.exe), macOS, and Linux. It is Open Source and all the documentation and code is available in the project repository at https://github.com/nativefier/nativefier/