Post

@nodejs.org made it simple to add native messaging support for extensions. Now  iCloud Passwords can talk to my @electronjs.org browser

5/2/25, 4:25 am1 repost7 likes

Jamie Birch

@shirakaba.bsky.social

5 Feb 2025

What’s native messaging support? I’m familiar with Node.js native addons and Node-API but less familiar with how Electron does things (have used it a little, though).

Sam

@samuelmaddock.com

5 Feb 2025

Extensions can talk to native applications over stdin/stdout developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/M... Electron's main process uses Node so I just needed to spawn the process and connect that to the extension background script. So far I've mostly seen this with password managers.

developer.mozilla.orgNative messaging - Mozilla | MDNNative messaging enables an extension to exchange messages with a native application, installed on the user's computer. The native messaging serves the extensions without additional accesses over the ...

Jamie Birch

@shirakaba.bsky.social

5 Feb 2025

Interesting. Sounds like a perfect solution for interfacing with CLI tools like FFmpeg and SQLite. Didn’t know it derived from browser extensions – I’ll have to read up on this!

Sam

@samuelmaddock.com

5 Feb 2025

Yep, the only caveat is that it's limited to json so typically a small helper utility is used. I'm guessing this is how some extensions integrate with Anki too.