excalidraw-desktop

Unofficial desktop client for Excalidraw on Windows & MacOS. It is just an electron wrapper for the website, I made this because I don't want to use it in a tab.

Installation

Head over to the releases page. Follow these steps:

1. Visit the Releases page.
2. Download the appropriate installer for your operating system:
3. Once downloaded, run the installer and follow the on-screen instructions to install the Excalidraw desktop client.

Macos Users

If you get the error "Is Damaged and Can’t Be Opened. You Should Move It To The Bin".
You can run the command:

xattr -c /Applications/Excalidraw.app

This is because I don't have a developer certificate and its not notarized.

Development or Building

Before building the project, ensure you have the following prerequisites installed on your system:

Prerequisites Node.js (version 14.x or higher) npm (comes with Node.js) To clone and set up the project, follow these steps:

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/excalidraw-desktop.git
cd excalidraw-desktop

Install the dependencies:

npm install

Running

Once the dependencies are installed, you can start the application in development mode.

To run the app in development mode:

npm run start

This command will open the Excalidraw desktop client in a development window.

Building

To create a production build and generate executable installers for both Windows and macOS:

Run the following command:

npm run dist

This will package the application into a distribution format (e.g., .exe for Windows and .dmg for macOS), which you can then share or install.

The generated installers will be found in the dist folder.