Run electerm From Your Terminal — the New electerm Command in PATH

You have a terminal open. You want a session on some box. Electerm is sitting there in /Applications or under %LOCALAPPDATA%, one alt-tab and a few clicks away, and every time you think: this should just be a command.

It is now. Settings → Common → Install electerm command to PATH → Install.

electerm                      # open the app
electerm user@example.com     # open the app and connect

That is the whole feature. What follows is what "add a command to PATH" has to mean on each platform — three different mechanisms, and on one of them it is not what you would guess.

What it actually writes

Three platforms, three different mechanisms. Nothing is guessed: the settings row shows you which directory it used.

Platform	What is created	Where
macOS	a small wrapper script — deliberately not a symlink	the first writable of /usr/local/bin, /opt/homebrew/bin, ~/.local/bin, ~/bin
Linux	a symlink named electerm	the first writable of /usr/local/bin, ~/.local/bin, ~/bin
Linux (AppImage)	a symlink to the .AppImage file you launched	same
Windows	no file at all — the folder containing electerm.exe is appended to your user PATH	HKCU\Environment

A few details that matter in practice:

• If none of those directories exists and is writable, electerm creates ~/.local/bin and tells you it is not on your PATH yet, so you can add it.
• The AppImage case is not a detail you can skip. An AppImage runs from a temporary squashfs mount (/tmp/.mount_electermXXXX). A symlink pointing there works exactly once. Electerm links $APPIMAGE instead — the file you actually double-clicked.
• On Windows, no launcher file is written, because there is nothing to write: the installer already put electerm.exe somewhere, and the only thing missing is that the folder is not on PATH. Editing the user PATH needs no administrator rights, and electerm uses [Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable rather than setx — setx silently truncates PATH at 1024 characters and expands %VAR% references, which is a genuinely bad way to lose entries.
• It is idempotent, and safe to repeat. Installing again rewrites the entry atomically (write a temp file, then rename over the target), so there is never a moment where the command does not exist. Electerm only ever replaces an entry it created itself.

Why macOS gets a script

On macOS the entry is a small shell script rather than a symlink:

#!/bin/sh
# electerm command wrapper
# launch electerm through its real path so it can find its Helper apps
unset ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE
exec "/Applications/electerm.app/Contents/MacOS/electerm" "$@"

Two reasons, both about starting the app correctly rather than merely finding it:

• Electron locates its Helper processes from the path of its own executable. The command therefore has to launch the binary at its real path inside the app bundle, which is what the exec line does. This is the same shape VS Code ships: /usr/local/bin/code is a script, not a symlink.
• The unset line clears ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE. Terminals started from inside another Electron app — an IDE's integrated terminal, for instance — export that variable, and an Electron binary that sees it starts a Node runtime instead of the app. Clearing it means electerm behaves the same whichever terminal you run it from.

If you ever want to do it by hand, use the same script:

sudo tee /usr/local/bin/electerm >/dev/null <<'EOF'
#!/bin/sh
unset ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE
exec "/Applications/electerm.app/Contents/MacOS/electerm" "$@"
EOF
sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/electerm

Installed, Outdated, Blocked

The settings row tells you the state, and each state means something specific:

Tag	What it means
Installed	The command exists and points at this app.
Outdated	A command exists but points somewhere else — you moved or reinstalled electerm. Click Install again and it is repointed.
Not installed	Nothing there yet.
Blocked	Something occupies that path and electerm did not create it. Electerm will not touch it.

Blocked is the interesting one, and it is deliberate. A file called electerm in /usr/local/bin that electerm did not write is your file, not ours. Overwriting it would be a nasty surprise, so electerm stops and leaves it alone. If you hit Blocked, remove the entry yourself and install again.

Uninstall removes only the entry electerm created. On Windows it takes the folder back out of your user PATH.

Only a packaged build can install it

If you run electerm from source, the row shows an explanation instead of buttons. That is not a missing feature: in an unpackaged run process.execPath is the Electron binary, not electerm, so installing would point your electerm command at bare Electron and break the command you were trying to create. The setting refuses to do it.

There is one more Windows-specific wrinkle: terminals that are already open keep the old PATH until you open a new one. Electerm broadcasts the environment change, but not every shell listens.

Where next

• How to install and set up electerm — if you have not got the app yet, for every OS including Android and iOS.
• Command line usage — everything the command accepts once it exists: connecting to a host, -tp for telnet/RDP/VNC/serial, batch operation files, DATA_PATH.
• Install electerm command — the wiki page for this feature, including the manual commands for all three platforms.