Electron Apps

Electron applications embed Chromium in a Windows desktop process. Dolphin can automate the parts of the UI that Electron exposes through Windows accessibility APIs.

Launch With Accessibility Enabled

from dolphin_desktop import Desktop

desktop = Desktop()
app = desktop.launch_electron(r"C:\Path\To\MyElectronApp.exe")
win = app.window(title_re=".*My Electron App.*")

launch_electron() appends --force-renderer-accessibility if the command does not already include it.

You can pass the flag yourself when needed:

app = desktop.launch(
    r"C:\Path\To\MyElectronApp.exe --force-renderer-accessibility",
    timeout=20,
)

Detect Electron

if app.is_electron():
    print("Electron runtime detected")

Detection checks the Chromium window class and known Electron module names. It returns False on errors.

Selectors

After accessibility is enabled, inspect the tree:

dolphin spy --window "My Electron App" --depth 4

Then use the exposed roles and names:

win.get_by_role("Edit", name="Username").type_text("admin")
win.get_by_role("Button", name="Sign in").click()
win.get_by_text("Welcome").wait_for(state="visible", timeout=10)

Not every Electron app exposes the same tree. Custom-rendered controls may require a different selector or an image fallback.

App-Side Option

For an Electron app you own, enable the accessibility flag in test mode from the main process:

app.commandLine.appendSwitch("force-renderer-accessibility")

Fallback

If a control is not visible through UIA, the primary escape hatch for Electron's Chromium runtime is the CDP path — launch or connect with a debug port and drive the DOM directly (see Embedded web). Use image matching only when a debug port cannot be enabled: capture a template and match on pixels:

dolphin spy --image-pick --output-dir templates

win.image("templates/sign_in.png", confidence=0.9).click()