How to Restrict Unpacking of app.asar of an electron app?

Question

I have created an electron application and packaged it with electron builder, there's always a .asar file in some resources folder after application installation that can easily be extracted with the help of npm libraries like asar. Is there any way to restrict the end user without unpacking the asar ?

we can just use asar extract app.asar myfolder then the entire source code of application is copied into myfolder. If I store the license in the source code then it would be easy to change the license by unpacking the asar.

Expected : Way to restrict the end user without unpacking the asar ?

you cannot, asar is transparent file format so there's no way to prevent it. — OJ Kwon, Aug 17 '19 at 01:49
I've try unpack the asar file of Bootstrap Studio, but it extracted file with cpgz extension. Is this some kind of protection? — Edi Imanto, Jul 27 '20 at 21:22
But sometimes, I see .asar files that I can't extract. Does anyone have a similar experience? — iconique, Jul 07 '21 at 01:18

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered May 16 '23 at 14:39

If you are asking how to protect your license key or some other private key, then the answer is, you can't. If you deliver the license key in the client package to the client, they have it. Try to work around your issue with an alternate solution. Try putting the license key on a server that you can connect to from the client.

How to Restrict Unpacking of app.asar of an electron app?

1 Answers1