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Electron Fuses

Package time feature toggles

What are fuses?

For a subset of Electron functionality it makes sense to disable certain features for an entire application. For example, 99% of apps don't make use of ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE, these applications want to be able to ship a binary that is incapable of using that feature. We also don't want Electron consumers building Electron from source as that is both a massive technical challenge and has a high cost of both time and money.

Fuses are the solution to this problem, at a high level they are "magic bits" in the Electron binary that can be flipped when packaging your Electron app to enable / disable certain features / restrictions. Because they are flipped at package time before you code sign your app the OS becomes responsible for ensuring those bits aren't flipped back via OS level code signing validation (Gatekeeper / App Locker).

Current Fuses

runAsNode

Default: Enabled

@electron/fuses: FuseV1Options.RunAsNode

The runAsNode fuse toggles whether the ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE environment variable is respected or not. Please note that if this fuse is disabled then process.fork in the main process will not function as expected as it depends on this environment variable to function. Instead, we recommend that you use Utility Processes, which work for many use cases where you need a standalone Node.js process (like a Sqlite server process or similar scenarios).

cookieEncryption

Default: Disabled

@electron/fuses: FuseV1Options.EnableCookieEncryption

The cookieEncryption fuse toggles whether the cookie store on disk is encrypted using OS level cryptography keys. By default the sqlite database that Chromium uses to store cookies stores the values in plaintext. If you wish to ensure your apps cookies are encrypted in the same way Chrome does then you should enable this fuse. Please note it is a one-way transition, if you enable this fuse existing unencrypted cookies will be encrypted-on-write but if you then disable the fuse again your cookie store will effectively be corrupt and useless. Most apps can safely enable this fuse.

nodeOptions

Default: Enabled

@electron/fuses: FuseV1Options.EnableNodeOptionsEnvironmentVariable

The nodeOptions fuse toggles whether the NODE_OPTIONS and NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS environment variables are respected. The NODE_OPTIONS environment variable can be used to pass all kinds of custom options to the Node.js runtime and isn't typically used by apps in production. Most apps can safely disable this fuse.

nodeCliInspect

Default: Enabled

@electron/fuses: FuseV1Options.EnableNodeCliInspectArguments

The nodeCliInspect fuse toggles whether the --inspect, --inspect-brk, etc. flags are respected or not. When disabled it also ensures that SIGUSR1 signal does not initialize the main process inspector. Most apps can safely disable this fuse.

embeddedAsarIntegrityValidation

Default: Disabled

@electron/fuses: FuseV1Options.EnableEmbeddedAsarIntegrityValidation

The embeddedAsarIntegrityValidation fuse toggles an experimental feature on macOS that validates the content of the app.asar file when it is loaded. This feature is designed to have a minimal performance impact but may marginally slow down file reads from inside the app.asar archive.

For more information on how to use asar integrity validation please read the Asar Integrity documentation.

onlyLoadAppFromAsar

Default: Disabled

@electron/fuses: FuseV1Options.OnlyLoadAppFromAsar

The onlyLoadAppFromAsar fuse changes the search system that Electron uses to locate your app code. By default Electron will search in the following order app.asar -> app -> default_app.asar. When this fuse is enabled the search order becomes a single entry app.asar thus ensuring that when combined with the embeddedAsarIntegrityValidation fuse it is impossible to load non-validated code.

loadBrowserProcessSpecificV8Snapshot

Default: Disabled

@electron/fuses: FuseV1Options.LoadBrowserProcessSpecificV8Snapshot

The loadBrowserProcessSpecificV8Snapshot fuse changes which V8 snapshot file is used for the browser process. By default Electron's processes will all use the same V8 snapshot file. When this fuse is enabled the browser process uses the file called browser_v8_context_snapshot.bin for its V8 snapshot. The other processes will use the V8 snapshot file that they normally do.

grantFileProtocolExtraPrivileges

Default: Enabled

@electron/fuses: FuseV1Options.GrantFileProtocolExtraPrivileges

The grantFileProtocolExtraPrivileges fuse changes whether pages loaded from the file:// protocol are given privileges beyond what they would receive in a traditional web browser. This behavior was core to Electron apps in original versions of Electron but is no longer required as apps should be serving local files from custom protocols now instead. If you aren't serving pages from file:// you should disable this fuse.

The extra privileges granted to the file:// protocol by this fuse are incompletely documented below:

  • file:// protocol pages can use fetch to load other assets over file://
  • file:// protocol pages can use service workers
  • file:// protocol pages have universal access granted to child frames also running on file:// protocols regardless of sandbox settings

How do I flip the fuses?

The easy way

We've made a handy module, @electron/fuses, to make flipping these fuses easy. Check out the README of that module for more details on usage and potential error cases.

const { flipFuses, FuseVersion, FuseV1Options } = require('@electron/fuses')

flipFuses(
  // Path to electron
  require('electron'),
  // Fuses to flip
  {
    version: FuseVersion.V1,
    [FuseV1Options.RunAsNode]: false
  }
)

You can validate the fuses have been flipped or check the fuse status of an arbitrary Electron app using the fuses CLI.

npx @electron/fuses read --app /Applications/Foo.app

The hard way

Quick Glossary

  • Fuse Wire: A sequence of bytes in the Electron binary used to control the fuses
  • Sentinel: A static known sequence of bytes you can use to locate the fuse wire
  • Fuse Schema: The format / allowed values for the fuse wire

Manually flipping fuses requires editing the Electron binary and modifying the fuse wire to be the sequence of bytes that represent the state of the fuses you want.

Somewhere in the Electron binary there will be a sequence of bytes that look like this:

| ...binary | sentinel_bytes | fuse_version | fuse_wire_length | fuse_wire | ...binary |
  • sentinel_bytes is always this exact string dL7pKGdnNz796PbbjQWNKmHXBZaB9tsX
  • fuse_version is a single byte whose unsigned integer value represents the version of the fuse schema
  • fuse_wire_length is a single byte whose unsigned integer value represents the number of fuses in the following fuse wire
  • fuse_wire is a sequence of N bytes, each byte represents a single fuse and its state.
    • "0" (0x30) indicates the fuse is disabled
    • "1" (0x31) indicates the fuse is enabled
    • "r" (0x72) indicates the fuse has been removed and changing the byte to either 1 or 0 will have no effect.

To flip a fuse you find its position in the fuse wire and change it to "0" or "1" depending on the state you'd like.

You can view the current schema here.