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.
Grist Desktop is an Electron-based application designed to provide a seamless offline experience for opening and editing Grist spreadsheets. It enables users to work with spreadsheets without requiring an internet connection or reliance on online accounts.
Key Features:
Offline-capable spreadsheet editing
Cross-platform support (Windows, Mac, Linux)
No internet required for core functionality
Compatibility with CSV, JSON, and other structured data formats
Installable via winget
Audience & Benefit:
Ideal for professionals who need to work on spreadsheets offline or in environments without reliable internet access. It offers flexibility for data analysis, project management, and collaboration by allowing users to demonstrate the self-contained nature of Grist spreadsheets while maintaining independence from online services.
README
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.
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.
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 sandboxing off, the full raw power of Python will be available to any Grist
spreadsheet you open, without limitation to the spreadsheet itself. So if you do this:
Use only with your own Grist spreadsheets, or
Use only with spreadsheets you trust, or
Consider before opening any spreadsheet whether it may contain malicious instructions.
