Desktop App Export

Export your interactive story as a standalone desktop game for Windows, macOS or Linux. No installer, no external services, ready to run.

What is Desktop App Export?

Desktop App is an export format introduced in StoryFlow Editor 1.5.2. It takes your project and produces a real desktop game: the editor wraps its own Electron runtime around the same story runtime used by HTML export, then packages everything into a portable artifact for your operating system. Because the underlying runtime is identical, your exported game plays exactly like it does in HTML export and in Play in Editor.

What's Included in a Desktop Export:

• Native App Shell: A windowed or fullscreen desktop application with your project's name and icon
• Complete Story Runtime: The same engine that powers HTML export, embedded inside the app
• All Scripts and Assets: Every script, variable, character, image and audio file your story uses
• Launch Settings: Fullscreen, window size and resize behavior baked in from project settings

Platform Outputs

Desktop exports are written to a desktop/ folder inside your project directory. The produced artifact differs per platform:

Windows

Windows builds ship as a plain folder named after your project, containing a renamed executable plus its support files. There is no installer and no self-extracting archive. Players run the .exe directly, and you can zip the folder to distribute it.

YourProject/
└── desktop/
    └── My Story/
        ├── My Story.exe    (run this)
        └── ...             (support files)

macOS

macOS builds produce a single self-contained .app bundle. The bundle is ad-hoc signed rather than notarized with an Apple developer certificate, so the first launch shows a one-time security prompt about an unidentified developer. The standard workaround applies: right-click (or Control-click) the app and choose Open, then confirm. After that, the app opens normally.

YourProject/
└── desktop/
    └── My Story.app    (run this)

Linux

Linux builds produce a single portable .AppImage file that runs on most modern distributions without installation. Depending on how the file is transferred, you may need to mark it executable first:

chmod +x "My Story.AppImage"
./"My Story.AppImage"

How to Export

Export Steps:

1. Open your project in StoryFlow Editor
2. Ensure you've set a Startup Script via the menu next to the Play button (required for export)
3. Optionally adjust window behavior under Launch Settings
4. Click the dropdown arrow on the Export split button in the top-right corner of the editor
5. Select Desktop App as the export format (the row shows a glyph marking your current OS)
6. Click the main "Export" button
7. The editor automatically saves all changed files before exporting
8. When complete, click "Show in Folder" in the success toast to reveal the produced executable itself

Launch Settings

How the exported game launches is configured per project under Project Settings → Export → Desktop App:

App Icon

The project icon you set under Project Settings → General becomes the icon of the exported app. The editor converts it to the formats each platform needs (.ico on Windows, .icns on macOS) itself, in-process and completely offline. The only bundled tool involved is rcedit.exe, which stamps the finished .ico onto the Windows executable. No network access or external services are involved.

Runtime Behavior

The exported app wraps the editor's own Electron runtime around the same story runtime used by HTML export. Dialogue, options, branching, variables, characters, images and audio all behave exactly as they do in HTML export and in play-in-editor, so anything you test in the editor carries over unchanged.

There is one desktop-specific behavior: reaching the story's final END node closes the app. "Final" means an END node at the top level of your story, with no calling script left to return to. An END node inside a script invoked by a Run Script node still returns to the caller as usual, so modular stories work the same as everywhere else. Only when the call stack is empty does the app exit, giving a finished story a clean ending.

Troubleshooting