streamlined electron state management

Why

tldr: I want to use Zustand in my Electron app, seamlessly

Zustand is a great state management library. As with other state libraries such as Redux, it is recommended that a single store is used in your app.

For Electron apps this is an awkward problem as you need access to the store in both the main and renderer processes.

Zutron enables a single store workflow with Zustand in Electron apps, effectively simplifying the use of Zustand in this context by abstracting away the necessary IPC and dispatch management.

Features

• Use Zustand everywhere in your Electron app
• Single store workflow across the IPC boundary
• Works with the latest Electron security recommendations
• Supports BrowserWindow, BrowserView and WebContentsView
• Integrates with windows and views created at runtime
• Compatible with the main Zustand usage patterns
• Handles thunks, inline actions or Redux-style action objects

How It Works

Behind the scenes, Zutron creates an additional Zustand store in each renderer process. These stores are synchronized in one direction with your application store in the main process.

Actions from the renderer process(es) are dispatched across IPC to the main process store, which handles them and updates the application state accordingly. Internally, the Zutron renderer process store(s) receive these state updates over IPC and update themselves accordingly.

Accessing Your Application Store

• Renderer process
  • Application state can be accessed via the Zutron useStore hook
  • Actions & thunks can be dispatched via the Zutron useDispatch hook
• Main process
  • Application state can be accessed directly in the same way you normally use a vanilla Zustand store:
    • Either using the Zustand vanilla API utilities: getState, setState, subscribe, getInitialState
    • Or via the Zustand useStore hook
  • Actions & thunks can be dispatched via the Zutron dispatch helper

Getting Started

See the docs.

There are minimal example applications featuring three different Zustand usage patterns:

• Redux-style reducers
• Separate handlers
• Store-based handlers

Inspiration / Prior Art

This project would not exist without Reduxtron, shout out to vitordino for creating it!

• vitordino/reduxtron

  • Redux store in the main process, optionally synced to Zustand in the renderer
  • Zutron is based on Reduxtron
  • Great for Redux users, not an option if you want to use Zustand everywhere

• klarna/electron-redux

  • Bi-directional sync between one Redux store in the main process, and another in the renderer
  • No longer maintained
  • I created a fork to enable support for electron >= 14, however I won't be spending any more time on this approach