Awesome

Grist Desktop

This is an Electron build of Grist. Use it to easily open and edit Grist spreadsheets on your computer. It does not need the internet, and will work fine on a desert island (assuming you can find a power outlet). It is not tied to any online account or service.

This build is handy for all sorts of things, like editing splits for ML training runs, analyzing some CSV or JSON data, or preparing some structured lists for a batch job.

It is also the quickest way to demonstrate to the skeptical that a Grist spreadsheet on a hosted service really is fully self-contained, and that you could download it and work with it on your own hardware if you needed to.

For hosting Grist spreadsheets on a server for use by a team, better options are grist-core and grist-omnibus.

Download

See https://github.com/gristlabs/grist-desktop/releases

Screenshots

The Grist Meme Generator template being edited on an Intel Mac.

Grist on Intel Mac

A Wedding Planner on Ubuntu.

Grist on Linux

A D&D Encounter Tracker on an ARM Mac (M1).

Grist on Mac M1

A Doggy Daycare spreadsheet running on an old super-low-resolution Windows 7 setup.

Grist on Windows 7

Grist Desktop being used as a server on a LAN, on Windows 10 Pro (credit: Sylvain_Page).

Grist on Windows 10 Pro

How to build from source

You'll need an environment with bash, git, and yarn.

git submodule init
git submodule update
yarn install
yarn run setup
yarn run build
yarn run electron:preview
yarn run electron

Note for Windows users on importing documents

Due to technical limitations, Grist Desktop relies on symlinks to manage imported Grist documents. This feature will not work correctly on Windows by default, due to a Windows security policy: non-admin users must obtain a specific permission to be able to create symlinks. Please note that Microsoft suggests granting this permission only to trusted users, as it could expose security vulnerabilities if used improperly. If you are aware of the security implications and still want to let Grist Desktop work with imported Grist documents properly, see here for details about the permission you need to grant yourself, and use the Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc) to enable it for your Windows user.

Grist Desktop 0.2.10 has been confirmed to work with this permission granted. If you are unwilling to grant it, please stay tuned as we work on a new solution that does not involve symlinks.

Configure

There's no configuration needed if you are just running Grist Desktop as a regular app to view and edit Grist spreadsheets on your laptop. However, some aspects of Grist Desktop can be tuned with environment variables.

For developers: You can create a .env file in the root directory of the app and set the environment variables there. If you are a Grist Desktop end user, consider using the config file instead.

Environment variables

GRIST_DEFAULT_USERNAME: The name of the default user. Only effective when Grist Desktop initializes its database during the first launch. Default: You

GRIST_DEFAULT_EMAIL: The email of the default user. This is only effective when Grist Desktop initializes its database during the first launch. If you want to change this after initialization, you need to manually reset the database, re-initialize it and import your documents back. Usually you should not need to worry about this. Default: you@example.com

GRIST_HOST: The IP address to serve the Grist server from. It is not recommended to set this. See this note for more info. Default: localhost

GRIST_PORT: The port number to listen on. It is not recommended to set this. Default: Grist Desktop will randomly pick an available port.

GRIST_DESKTOP_AUTH: The authentication mode to use. Must be one of strict, mixed and none. none allows network access as you. mixed allows anonymous network access. strict disallows network access. This used to be GRIST_ELECTRON_AUTH, which is still supported but deprecated. When both are set, GRIST_DESKTOP_AUTH has higher precedence. If you are still using GRIST_ELECTRON_AUTH, please consider switching to GRIST_DESKTOP_AUTH. Default: strict

GRIST_SANDBOX_FLAVOR: The sandbox mechanism to use. It is recommended to stick to the default. Must be one of pyodide, gvisor, macSandboxExec and unsandboxed. See this note for more info. Default: pyodide

GRIST_INST_DIR, GRIST_DATA_DIR, GRIST_USER_ROOT and TYPEORM_DATABASE: These are a bit technical and require some understanding of how Grist Desktop works. For the time being, Grist Desktop works by launching a Grist server in the background. These variables can configure where the Grist server should store its files. By default, GRIST_INST_DIR is set to getPath("userData") defined by Electron; GRIST_DATA_DIR is set to getPath("documents"); GRIST_USER_ROOT is set to .grist in your home directory. TYPEORM_DATABASE is set to landing.db under getPath("appData"). If you change them, make sure to move existing data accordingly. See grist-core documentation for details. You might want to store your Grist documents somewhere else and have a clean "Documents" folder. In this case, set GRIST_DATA_DIR to your desired location and move all .grist files there.

Note on using Grist Desktop as a server

If you are sure you are in a trusted environment, you can use the app as a quick way to set up a simple Grist server, but be aware that data is being sent using plain http and not encrypted https, so network traffic could be readable in transit. And there is no login mechanism built in.

If you have security concerns, we recommend switching to a proper Grist server installation instead - see https://support.getgrist.com/self-managed/

Note on sandboxing

Sandboxing limits the effects of formulas in spreadsheets. It is recommended to use pyodide, as gvisor and macSandboxExec are not yet easy to use.

If you turn it off, the full raw power of Python will be available to any Grist spreadsheet you open. So:

Use only with your own Grist spreadsheets, or
Use only with spreadsheets you trust, or
Turn sandboxing the heck back on, or
Return to the YOLO days of opening spreadsheets and crossing your fingers.

History

Learn the back-story of this work in the Packaging Grist as an Electron app forum thread.

It draws on some ideas from https://github.com/stan-donarise/grist-core-electron/ and from an early standalone version of Grist developed at Grist Labs.

Roadmap

License

Apache License, Version 2.0