Comparing Encrypted SQLite Libraries for Electron — Why better-sqlite3-multiple-ciphers Is the Default Pick

A practical comparison of encrypted SQLite libraries for Electron desktop apps that need Data at Rest protection. It walks through better-sqlite3-multiple-ciphers, @journeyapps/sqlcipher, @signalapp/sqlcipher, SQLite SEE, and Realm across cipher choice, N-API prebuilds, licensing, and macOS signing / notarization, and explains why better-sqlite3-multiple-ciphers is the default recommendation.

Prototyping Electron encrypted SQLite libraries — running better-sqlite3-multiple-ciphers and @journeyapps/sqlcipher on macOS and Windows

I turned the desk-based comparison from the previous post into working Electron Todo recipes and ran them on both macOS and Windows. better-sqlite3-multiple-ciphers dropped in on both operating systems with only its N-API prebuilds, while @journeyapps/sqlcipher 6.0.0 built on macOS but officially dropped Windows and only comes back with a vcpkg-based OpenSSL workaround. This post walks through the three recipes and four pull requests in app-distribution-recipes and summarizes what the measurements confirmed.

A 2026 Audit of Famous Electron Apps — Why VS Code, Slack, and Claude Desktop Stick With It and What's Quietly Leaving

Electron in 2026 still powers Visual Studio Code, Slack, Discord, Notion, 1Password 8, Signal Desktop, ChatGPT for Windows, the newly arrived OpenAI Codex Desktop, and Claude Desktop, while Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp Desktop, and Zed have moved off it. Working from public engineering blogs and repository inspection, this post maps the famous Electron adopters, untangles common mis-identifications, and lays out the optimization patterns that define the 2026 picture.