I am trying to learn how to build an electron app, so I decided to try making the quickstart project found on the official website here.

However, I quickly ran into problems because I keep getting errors, and I cannot even begin to build the app because electron won’t run.

I downloaded the latest LTS version of Node.js, and then I ran the following commands in the terminal:

npm init -y
npm i --save-dev electron
touch main.js

I did not modify the main.js file, so it is blank.
I then changed the default scripts in package.json into:

"start": "electron ."

After this, I then ran npm start, but it gave me the following error:

dyld: Library not loaded: /System/Library/Frameworks/UniformTypeIdentifiers.framework/Versions/A/UniformTypeIdentifiers

and it also said Reason: image not found

I tried deleting all the files and restarting from scratch, thinking that I might have made a mistake somewhere.

I tried putting in console.log("Hello World") in the main.js file, and then running npm start again.

I tried shutting down my computer and turning it on again.

None of these things worked.

I also tried to run electron . directly in the command line, and that’s when I got the error zsh: command not found: electron.

I also tried starting over again and making electron a dependency instead of dev dependency, but I still got all the same errors.

I tried googling different keywords and phrases from the errors I received, but I could not find anything that I could try to use as a possible solution.

The only way I could get my main.js to run was if I put node main.js in the command line, and it properly logged Hello World in the terminal.

I’m not sure if it is relevant, but for reference I am using a 2019 16-inch Macbook Pro on macOS Catalina 10.15.7.

If there is already a similar case out there, I apologize that I couldn’t find it due to my lack of experience. I am an absolute beginner in electron and I’m just starting to figure things out. I would appreciate any help on this. Thank you.