Create a Windows installer for your Web Apps.

Amit Gujar
3 min readMay 21, 2020

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In order to install new software on your computer, you often need to run an installer program. This program unpacks compressed data included with the installer and writes new information to your hard drive. While some installers do not use compressed data, most use some level of compression since it reduces the size of the files included with the installer. This is especially helpful when downloading programs or software updates from the Internet. Windows Installer enables the efficient installation and configuration of your products and applications running on Windows. However there are different ways to create Installer but In this article, I will tell you an easy method to create it using visual studio.

credit: Christian Engvall

What do you need?

  1. A .exe file of your web application.
  2. Download Visual Studio
  3. Download Installer Extension.

Getting Started

Open Visual Studio > Create a new project > Setup project.

Now provide name and location for your installer and click on create.

Click on the Application folder and add all your application files including its node dependencies.

Now it’s time to create a desktop shortcut for your application. Click on the user’s desktop option. Right-click in blank space then select create a new shortcut. Specify the path of .exe file of your app and click ok.

Now if you want then you can set the name/icon for your application shortcut, after that click on your project on the left side and then click the properties tab on the right panel to add some more info for your app.

Now right-click on your project to build (this process will take some time). After a successful build, you can check the location of the build.

In the debug folder you will find the setup/windows installer of your application.

Still, if you need any help then watch my video.

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