A few months ago I built an internal desktop tool for my company using Electron. It runs on machines across every branch office — different cities, different networks, different levels of IT literacy on the other end.
Last week I needed to ship a fix. Not a "whenever people get around to it" fix — a mass update, same day, everywhere.
Here's the part that made that possible: I never had to visit a single branch, email a setup file, or ask anyone to click "install." I opened my terminal, ran two commands, and walked away. By the next morning, every machine running the app had already updated itself.
That wasn't luck. It was because a few months earlier — before I needed it — I had wired up a proper auto-update system using electron-updater. This post breaks down exactly how that system works, end to end, and how it turned what should have been a logistical nightmare into a non-event. Hopefully it saves someone else the trial and error.
The problem with internal desktop software
